Red vs Blue: Corruption
by EpsilonChurchRVB
Summary: With the arrest of Malcolm Hargrove, the Reds and Blues, and Chorus' arduous fight against Charon Industries has ended. However, in the vast regions of space, a new threat comes to light as it quickly gets the Reds and Blues involved into another fight for their lives. Takes place before Red vs. Blue Season 15 and during the events of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
1. Chapter 1: Someone Unfamiliar

**I recently started to binge on the whole entire Red vs. Blue series and also started playing Metroid Prime 3: Corruption after a long time. So I was like "Hey, since I love both Metroid and Red vs. Blue and never seen any crossovers around the web between those two, I shall make it a possibility one day". And so I did, thanks for the inspiration I had from Rockgod96's Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch crossover, "Don't You Dare Clock Out Early". You should check his fanfic out as it is one of the best ones I've ever read!**

 **This is my very first fanfiction (and crossover) ever made so bear with me if you see any inconsistencies, bad grammar, or any other type of errors. I'll do my best to try and improve along as I go. I'm probably gonna have to rewatch some episodes of Red vs. Blue and replay through the whole entire game of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, since my knowledge on both of them are still limited and a bit blurred so I apologize if I don't seem to stay true to both series. The first couple of chapters are mainly going to be the introduction of the whole story, since I have quite a handful of ideas I wanna put in before I continue on with what will later be the most interesting part of the story. This is going to be a challenge for me, but I am ready to face it so let's get to it ;)**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated to both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _ **Red vs. Blue: Corruption**_

 _Chapter 1: Someone Unfamiliar_

"I'm here now!" Samus has joined the group just in time before the elevator was heading up to their destination.

"You're late!" Gandrayda exclaimed, before anyone could say a word. "We were about to leave you behind."

Samus turned to Gandrayda, showing the struggle on how she just fought something that got in her way. "Sorry about that. Had some little loose ends to take care of."

"You feeling okay, Samus?" Washington said, as he was showing concern on what type of struggle she went through before she reunited with them.

"Don't worry about her." Rundas answered to Wash in a reassuring manner. "She's fought worse and it'll take more than just a flying cybernetic-enhanced pirate to put her down, right Samus?"

"Yeah sure... thanks for the help back there anyway. I owe you double time."

"You mean, she fought that thing that was flying around the base complex?" Wash was looking surprised as he knew one ordinary-military trained person like him wouldn't stand a chance fighting it just by looking at it. "That thing looks a lot more menacing than one of our friend's old robotic mantis! Or even this guy here with the giant suit of armor!"

Ghor simply groaned and looked at Wash menacingly. Wash immediately turned his voice into a timid-like person, as he took notice on Ghor's reaction.

"Ok maybe I take that back on what I just said..."

"I'm pretty sure we still have a lot of learning to do on what we are up against, right Samus?" Carolina asked as she knew there was something more than just all of what she has just witnessed this past hour.

"That's right." Samus then noticed Carolina's irritated expression and quickly replied, "We barely had any time to cover on what's been going on in the past couple years. There's just too much that's happening to stop and explain everything to you, Wash, and the others who are with you."

"Everyone! Stop talking!" Ghor raised his voice in a harsh tone, due to his altered personality and behavior from the consequence of merging with his suit. "The meteor is approaching faster than you think!"

"If we don't make it to the top in time, we can kiss this planet good-bye," Gandrayda replied.

"Hey, relax!" Rundas countered. "We're the good guys. Justice will prevail and all that stuff... right Samus?"

"I wouldn't really count on it coming from own personal experience..." Washington said, as he was sure that wasn't always true, considering how he, Carolina, the Reds and Blues, and everyone back at Chorus brought justice at a high cost after the battle against Charon Industries and its mercenaries.

Just a few seconds later, the elevator suddenly stops as it just arrived at their destination to the control tower.

Everyone rushed out of the elevator and into the control tower as Samus and Rundas were ahead of the others, trying to take control of the defense system to destroy the meteor that was heading towards the planet. The others went to guard their surroundings as Samus tried to take control of the defense cannon.

"C'mon... you can do this." Samus told herself in her mind, as her adrenaline was rising throughout her body.

Just as Samus was about to confirm the activation of the defense cannon, a bright blue ball of light came in, bursting through the windows of the control tower with ease.

"What the hell!" Carolina exclaimed, just as she saw a huge bright blue-looking ball before them.

As soon as it started to dim and reveal what it was, it was no one other than Dark Samus herself.

"It's her!"

"Open fire!" Ghor ordered as soon as he realized what it was.

Everyone immediately opened fire at her, but to no avail. Any type of projectile hitting directly at the dark entity was either dissolving through her phazon shield, or ricocheting elsewhere.

"Why isn't it doing anything to her!" Wash, frustrated at this, took out his rocket launcher and shot her on sight, but the impact on the dark creature would do little to no damage as Dark Samus began to taunt at Wash.

"You think even one of your biggest toys can hurt me?" Dark Samus then turned to Samus, standing straight in front of her. "I learned and acquired a few tricks thanks to you inevitably, inferior twin."

The dark creature then gave a chuckle and, then fired back at each of them. Rundas, Gandrayda, Ghor, and Washington were hit, but not enough to leave any major injury, while Carolina and Samus quickly dodged, barely having minor hits of phazon on their armor. As soon as everybody else got up their feet, they formed a stance, trying to protect the control system to the defense cannon as they did and prepared for anything the dark entity had in store for them.

What the bounty hunters and the dual freelancers didn't know, however, was that Dark Samus was already in motion as she begun using a variant version of Samus' charge beam at them, hurling huge amounts of phazon energy towards every single one of them, seemingly rendering them unconscious. Just as Dark Samus overlooks at their downed bodies, she gives out a maniacal laughter, before flying away, outside to an unknown location...

 _48 hours earlier on an isolated moon..._

"Geez I feel like there hasn't been any war or battle for years!" Sarge has been losing his mind without having anything to fight for. As he was standing, facing the big scenery next to where Tucker was sitting on a pair of big rocks, he began to holler loudly, annoying Tucker in the process.

"When shall there be a good day to die in bat-!"

He was immediately cut off as Tucker finally got irritated by the same phrase over and over again. "For the love of God, Sarge! You've been saying that pretty much everyday after your robotic army started malfunctioning and got into a war between the now-extinct dinosaurs who inhabited this isolated moon. I mean, I know it was weird, fun to watch and all, but please! It's been enough!"

"You know what, son?" Sarge turned his whining tone into a more calm demeanor one. "Living this boring life without doing anything can get to you ya' know. One day you'll understand when you get to my age."

Tucker knew he wouldn't go anywhere in an arguement like this, but he didn't care. "Look Sarge..." Tucker gave an annoyed look to him and replied, "No offense, but if I didn't know you all that well or never fought alongside with you multiple times, I would have stabbed you with my sword multiple times already." He stood up from where he was sitting, jumped down and walked somewhere else, away from Sarge. The rest of the Reds, Blues and freelancers weren't also too keen in having to hear Sarge like this, with the exception of Simmons, who would almost agree with everything he would say and sometimes, Grif who would only go along with it out of boredom.

Even when most of the Reds and Blues decided to be noisy at night time, whether it would be Donut singing one of his jams, Caboose rolling down the hills as he yells how much fun it is to do so, Sarge going around and about with different warthogs, much to the annoyance of Lopez, or Simmons having loud conversations with Grif, to the point of heavy arguing, everyone, including the freelancers, were pretty much used to it, as they already spent enough time to bear each and every one of each others' quirks, with the exception of Lopez, incapable of understanding why almost everyone are a whole bunch of idiots most of the time. Since he had nowhere else to go, his only option was to stay with the group, even though sometimes, he'd show some concern for them.

Carolina however, unlike Washington, who has spent more time with them than she ever did, had some trouble trying to fully adapt with their daily living at first, until she decided to try something new by singing in a band Tucker, Grif, and Caboose made, but mainly to watch their reaction towards her singing, since she knew how flirty they would get about it. At some point, she also wanted to know how to be a true lazy person, just like Grif and even asked for his help about it, much to Grif's surprise.

"Hey Tucker!" Caboose hollered at a distance as he was seemingly enjoying himself watching the scenery on the other side of their main base.

"I'm coming, Caboose!"

Tucker made his way towards him. At this point, he didn't mind Caboose anymore, because as time passed, he got used to living with him and even supported him emotionally whenever he would feel alone and sad about the loss of Church back on Chorus. Sometimes, he felt like a big brother for the poor guy and it was a great feeling for him. "Yeah, what's up?"

"Tucker... I-" He paused for a moment, unsure of what to say to him.

"Yeah...?" Tucker's tone suddenly became sounding more concerned. "Are you okay buddy?"

After a brief silence, Caboose finally spoke, with enlightenment.

"I've just been thinking... about how uh... you've been really nice to me. And um... I'm really glad I have you as my best friend!"

Tucker, as shocked as he looked in hearing Caboose say that he was like a best friend to him, he didn't say a word, but instead, gave him a hug. For a brief moment, he was tearing apart as to how much sympathy he has for the blue guy. He knew the type of struggles Caboose has been through and it hurts to also realize how much of a jerk he was to him at times before. All Caboose needed was someone to support him emotionally and rarely, Epsilon was there to do just that, until his sacrifice, which cost him his existence, but saved everyone's lives.

A couple minutes later, Grif showed up next to them, just as they finished their hug.

"Aww... aren't you guys a cute little couple?"

"Dude, seriously?" Tucker became furious about the comment and then immediately almost lashed out at him.

"Do you even have any idea on what Caboose has been through!? Nobody has helped him as much as I have, other than Wash maybe, but you are not helping at all!"

"Calm down, man! I was just kidding. Gosh what's with the attitude?"

"Hey, just stop it will you?"

Grif just wanted to joke around at least for a little, but he decides to do it some other time, just to not have to deal with anyone's attitude, since he just wanted to quickly take a nap.

"Alright fine. Anyway, just came by to ask if you have ever seen my pillow that I use to take naps?"

"Not at all," Tucker replied. "But don't you always keep it to your side at all times? Who would wanna steal something that's right next to your smelly ass, anyway?"

"I don't know!" Grif exclaimed. "Why do you think I'm asking around? Sarge doesn't need it as he's always sleeping on the bench we made near the edge of this hill. Pretty sure Simmons already has one of his own. And Donut, I don't know where he's-"

Just as he was about to finish his sentence, Donut started calling out to Grif.

"Hey, Grif!" Donut was holding what it seemingly looked like a pillow on his hand, waving it at Grif.

"Wait, you took my pillow?!" Grif yelled. "Why?!"

Tucker took advantage of the situation and tried to irk him a bit, giving a little chuckle at the end.

"I guess Donut really likes that pillow haha!"

"Shut up, Tucker!"

"Your fault that you started it," Tucker countered, and moved on to have some small talks with Caboose.

Grif immediately ran towards Donut and demanded an explanation. "Now tell me. Why did you steal it?! You know I don't like it when people take my stuff without my permission, even though if I might as well say no to them anyway."

"Oh, sorry about that." Donut gave a small worried expression. "I didn't know it was yours. I just wanted to take a small nap with this pillow and gosh this memory foam material is sooo comfy!"

Grif then snatched the pillow from his hand and warned him afterwards.

"If you ever go through my stuff again, I'm hitting you with a shovel next time."

"Okay, okay! Geez you don't have to be so rude and violent."

After the conversation between Grif and Donut, they both parted ways.

Along the way, Grif bumped into someone in an orange-greenish like armor. It didn't look like someone from the UNSC, Project Freelancer, or even from around UNSC space. They looked human though, but with alien type of tech, not known anywhere else. Grif was greatly confused.

"Hey, you must be one of the Reds and Blues right? One of the most greatest galactic warriors or something?" The person behind the alien-looking suit asked.

"I'm sorry, who the heck are you?"

 _To be continued..._

 **So this is it. My very first chapter of the story! As you can see, I started off with a flash-forward to make things a little bit more interesting later on in the story. My first mistake was probably make it longer than it should've been, but oh well. The reason why is because I chose to put everything that I can think about and edit everything as I go along.**

 **I can't promise you anything, but in later chapters, I'm planning to do some more hurt/comfort friendship stuff going on, similar to what I did with Tucker and Caboose in this chapter so get ready when it comes to that. Also, there will be more action later on too so be on the lookout. Since I don't have that much spare time to sit on my computer and think everything thoroughly, the next chapter might take a while so pardon me if it takes too much time to be put up. Oh and PLEASE leave reviews! It'll help me get better and see how many people end up liking this too!**


	2. Chapter 2: Help Wanted

**Sorry this took a while. I've been really busy in life lately and had troubles remembering MP3 as it's been a long time.**

 **Here is the second chapter where it takes place right before Samus heads her way to the isolated moon the Reds and Blues inhabit.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated to both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 2: Help Wanted_

It's been six months since Samus' last mission at Aether, where she once fought the ferocious dark creatures, called the Ing, who were determined to bring destruction to anything in their path. The one thing she was hopeful not to see again was the reincarnation of Metroid Prime, a sinister doppelganger born from pure phazon. As far as she knew, both the Ing Horde and Dark Samus were extinct and she wanted it to stay that way.

After a long time without communication, the Galactic Federation has finally requested a meeting with various bounty hunters, including Rundas, Ghor, Gandrayda, and Samus herself.

Ghor has been a friend of Samus for at least a couple of years or so. She wasn't really close to him, but she knew Ghor had a high sympathy of a will of justice, as it can be seen with all the loss of about 90% of his whole organic body. Now his body is mostly mechanical, but has still retained his characteristics of a strong willed being, save for his alteration whenever he merges with his suit, drastically changing his personality as he becomes more aggressive and violent.

Gandrayda is much like a sister to Samus, as she loves being competitive towards her. For Samus however, she thinks it's just for show and, to some extent, a child like behavior. Gandrayda wanted to have a rivalry, at least towards someone who she deems worthy, in order to show how she could be as good or better than the other individual, but could only do so much with her mimicry abilities. Samus and Gandrayda both get along pretty well as the Galactic Federation has records of both of them having to cooperate like perfect siblings, although Gandrayda's cockiness and over confidence can sometimes get the best of her, especially when working with her so called rivalry.

Rundas, out of the three, was probably one of Samus' closest friends she has in her life, other than Commander Adam Malkovich, after Grey Voice and Old Bird. She's known him for quite a time, after some small and independent missions like raiding places where Space Pirates were once stationed to take over a certain area or preventing certain technological alien stuff from going into the wrong hands of the Space Pirates. She's been able to rely on him when necessary as Rundas has always been there to help her, even when Samus couldn't admit she didn't have a situation under control as Rundas always knew when she needed help the most or not.

As Samus was arriving in the vicinity of the G.F.S. Olympus near the planet, Norion, she saw a glimpse of what appeared to be a spaceship that might've most likely belonged to Gandrayda, since her ship is some sort of a durable small pink cylinder-like ship.

"I'm guessing if Gandrayda has just arrived, it would only mean I'm either early or late to the meeting," Samus said to herself, unsure when would exactly the meeting start with or without her. As she put that thought away, she continued on until she was stopped by a transmission from the Olympus itself. A man can be heard from behind the radio, instructing Samus to identify herself, in order to let her through.

"Unidentified vessel, please switch to a radio frequency and transmit your identity code. We are standing by," the man behind the radio said, as Samus begin doing what she was told to do. Immediately after she sent her identity code, the radio came to life once again. "Transmission verified. Greetings Samus. We welcome you on behalf of the Galactic Federation."

After the process was complete, a marine located at the docking area where Samus was cleared to enter, made contact with her. "Proceed to the command ship G.F.S. Olympus. You've been cleared for docking bay five. Welcome back, Samus." Just like that, she was able to fly her ship into the docking area near the training simulation grounds. As soon as she parked her ship and got out, she first checked to see if her suit was still normally functioning, even though her gunship's computer system told her it was at full functionality. It's not that it was inaccurate. It was more of just a reassuring measure, in case anything goes wrong.

As she approached the main entrance of the docking area, she was met and greeted by a couple of marines as they instructed her to calibrate her weapon and aiming systems, before entering. Just after she did on what she was told to do so, one of them gave her information about the meeting.

"Welcome aboard the flagship G.F.S. Olympus. As you may already know, Admiral Dane is waiting for you in the briefing room," the marine said, with a slight tone of nervousness in his voice since he was just talking to the famous bounty hunter, Samus Aran. "The meeting should start in about 10 minutes. I will upload the location to you now."

"Thank you," Samus answered, as she was beginning to feel a bit of a relief that she wasn't as late as she thought she would be. As Samus began moving towards the west side of the flagship and arrived at the room where they scan for anyone trying to enter the Command Bridge, she saw Ghor just entering the containment area.

"Try not to move. We need a stable im-" Just as the worker was about to finish his sentence, he was cut-off by an irritated Ghor.

"I understand the procedure," Ghor interrupted, a bit annoyed about how they needed to tell him the procedure every time they entered the area.

It didn't take long before they finished scanning him as he was mostly made of machine, in which makes him a lot easier to scan through, unlike a more organic living person.

"Subject is cleared for the Command Bridge," a computer system AI said, just as it was finished scanning Ghor.

"You may proceed," the man behind the other side of the glass said.

"Of course," Ghor replied, in a more friendlier manner this time.

Samus was next, so she did as she was told to do so, without question or expressing any annoyance towards the procedure like Ghor did before her.

"Initiating DNA verification..." the worker said, who scanned Ghor previously. Just 8 seconds later, the worker got an identity of who she was. "DNA verified. Registration no. 13576. Identified as Bounty Hunter, Samus Aran." Just as he finished his sentence he quickly started the biohazard procedure. "Preparing biohazard scan..."

For a moment, Samus wanted to ask why they didn't do a biohazard scan for Ghor, but then quickly reminded herself that there's no need to question on anything, that's if she doesn't want to ruin her reputation towards the Galactic Federation. She continued doing as told. The panel began taking a signature of her.

 _"Analyzing Biohazard Scan..._

 _Status: Clear_

 _Chozo Varia Suit Online"_

Samus was reading along and said in her mind, "Of course it is online and active! How else am I managing to use my suit in the first place?"

"No harmful material detected. You are cleared for the Command Bridge, Samus," the man said.

"Yes sir," Samus replied. She continued onward to the Command Bridge. When she arrived, she was stopped by one of the marines guarding the entrance towards the briefing room.

"Samus, right?" The marine asked with a more calm, but authoritarian tone of voice than the other marine she last talked with.

"That's me," Samus replied, without hesitation.

"Admiral Dane has ordered me to remind you that suit maintenance and data backup from your suit's memory bank should be put in place, before you enter the meeting."

"It was already done inside my ship, just after I arrived," Samus answered.

"Then you are clear to go. Admiral Dane is waiting inside," the marine said.

"Thanks," Samus said in return, as she began moving towards the door behind the marine. As she was arriving in the briefing room past the long corridor, she saw that the other hunters were already there. One thing that got her attention, however, was that the hunters were looking at her, confused, and turned their heads to a reflection of her own self just to Rundas' right.

"Gandrayda! Enough!" Admiral Dane ordered, knowing that the one next to Rundas wasn't Samus at all.

Gandrayda turned back to her own purplish self again, while giggling like a child. "I was just having some fun, that's all."

Admiral Dane just gave her a serious look and turned back to face Samus, with his serious expression telling her she was almost late. Samus just nodded slightly, letting him know she understood what he told her in her mind.

"Looks like everyone is here now," Admiral Dane stated, turning his head towards everyone else, as if his head was automated to scan everyone in the room. "Before anything else, you may have heard a computer AI doing announcements as you were heading your way into this room. Let me start, by introducing 242, the flagship's Aurora Unit." Just after he finished his last word, a blue hologram came to life. Inside the hologram was a brain-like mechanoid, with cables attached from its bottom. Everyone looked at it, familiar with such supercomputers they've seen installed in other regions of Galactic Federation Space.

"Ah, an organic supercomputer. Fascinating!" Ghor exclaimed, now realizing what it really was. "I've seen these before during one of my missions last year. I remember a group of Space Pirates tried to raid a Federation building in a planet, called Junniper in which they failed, but managed to disrupt the Aurora Unit's link to the station. I was the one who fixed it and manage to restore everything back to normal. If I'm not mistaken, the Galactic Federation's core network is compromised of such units."

"That is correct, Ghor," said the Aurora Unit with a female-type of persona. "And we serve as the network's master control. However, currently the network is doing."

"That seems inefficient," Ghor replied, stating the obvious.

"But necessary," 242 shot back. "You see, seven days ago we discovered that all Aurora Units were infected with an unknown virus. Due to this, we were forced to bring the network down. Fortunately our scientists were quickly able to devise a vaccine that can purge the virus."

"So does the vaccine actually work, or is it just temporary?" Samus asked.

"Unit 242 was the first AU to receive the vaccine and as of now, there has been no side effects of any sorts, confirming that the virus was completely purged from it," Admiral Dane replied.

"Where did this virus come from?" Gandrayda asked.

"We believe the virus is of Space Pirate origin," the Admiral answered. "Four months ago, the G.F.S. Valhalla went missing while on a training mission in the Klar nebula. From what we managed to gather from the ship's logs, they revealed that they were attacked by a Space Pirate raiding vessel."

"Out of all things... why attack and disrupt a Federation training mission?" Ghor became puzzled at the idea of Space Pirates going after a mere defenseless ship, seemingly achieving almost no logical goals in doing so.

"They're pirates," Gandrayda shot back at him. "How could they resist a prize like that?"

"That never would've happen if I'd been there..." Rundas said with a regretful tone, thinking how he could have gotten rid of all those pirates within minutes.

"Then it's a shame you weren't..." Admiral Dane stated with almost a cold tone in his voice and continued on his briefing right after with a normal tone once more. "During the invasion, the pirates went inside the vessel and got a hold of the ship's Aurora Unit, 313 and that is how they managed to hack into the network and plant the virus from there, spreading it like wildfire."

"Thanks to our security protocols..." the AU seemingly went back to life as it spoke, "we were able to shutdown the network just in time before the virus did irreversible damage."

"This makes us more vulnerable however, as we'd be hard pressed to defend ourselves if Space Pirates were to launch a major offensive," the Admiral warned them. "We MUST rid the other AUs of that virus and bring them back online, but before we can proceed, we will be needing more help than this." He turned to face Samus. "That's where you come in. We already have another group of so called 'Reds and Blues' or how they are known as the 'Greatest Galactic Warriors'." He had the AU show a blue-holographic image of the Reds and Blues from the Interstellar Daily article from another region known as the UNSC space.

"They don't even look like Bounty Hunters or anything else trained for this type of situation, except probably for those two in the front," Gandrayda stated. "What makes them so special about being the 'Greatest Galactic Warriors'? I'd love to see them try and save a whole planet from becoming a wasteland." She winked at Samus just as she finished her sentence.

"As a matter of fact they did," the Admiral replied. "I read their background and according to the Interstellar Daily article that they published in that region of space, they managed to bring Project Freelancer to justice, save a whole planet from an escalated Civil War, and ended the dictatorship of Chairman Malcolm Hargrove from Charon Industries. All these events has lead them become what they really are and we could use some more helping hands from all of them, if possible."

"How did you manage to trace a group of soldiers like them?" Rundas wondered.

"Just before the whole network came offline, we managed to reach out a distress signal that came from across this particular region, but we didn't get enough information as to where exactly it came from, until just recently," AU 242 explained. "Using a probe that was thought to be lost, located not too far from that region, is how we managed to trace the amounts of data we received. As of now, the Reds and Blues are located on an isolated moon not far from the reaches of planet Chorus. Samus, I will give you the coordinates to the isolated moon now."

"So you want me to go find and bring them here?" Samus asked to the Admiral.

"That's your current objective. Once you bring them here, we need all the help we can get to get rid of the virus and the pirates for good." Admiral Dane replied. He turned to the other Bounty Hunters soon after. "As of you three, we need you guys to search for any more pirate activities around the region as we need to know what are they really trying to accomplish by bringing down the whole AU network. Any questions?" He started scanning the room, making sure there were no confused looks on their faces as everyone nodded their heads sideways. "Alright then you all know what to do! Get going!" The hunters quickly followed his order in an instant, without question, but stopped one of them.

"Samus!" He hollered.

Samus turned around and walked towards the admiral as he was standing right in front of the AU hologram in the middle of the briefing room. "Yes, Admiral?".

"We need at least four of those colored soldiers, that's if you can't manage to convince them all in joining our cause,"

"I'll do my best, sir!"

"Then you know what to do. You have at least 48 hours before our next meeting starts and this time, with them present in this exact room where we are standing. I already gave a clearance for these soldiers, in case any one of them are volunteering."

"Yes, sir! I'll be on my way!" Samus said, without hesitation. The Admiral gave her a slight nod as she left the room. Just as she arrived to her ship, one of the marines guarding the area where he ship was parked, came to her. It was the same marine that greeted her when she first arrived in the flagship.

"Here... you should take this,"

"What is it?"

The marine handed her what it looked like a grapple beam upgrade capsule designed specifically for her Chozo suit.

"I found this laying around here in the training grounds. I had one of the engineers upgrade the model of the grapple beam and made the grapple more resistant to your force of pulling objects and such, basically turning it into a grapple lasso at once."

"Oh, thanks!"

As soon as Samus touched the capsule, it immediately disintegrated in her hand and immediately transferred itself into her arm, making it look as if she had a portable secondary gun on her left arm. This process of acquiring upgrades to her suit was possible by the Chozo tech she had as it can immediately grab almost any type of upgrade that's compatible to her suit, if not, even try to convert it into an upgradable part of her Power Suit.

"It looks quite nice on you! Mind if-" The marine was cut off as soon as he was hit with a fist on the face just after he made a slight flirting gesture. "Ow!"

Samus didn't say a word, but she was sure enough that the marine understood why she hit him. As she got aboard her ship, she inputted her objective coordinates to her ship's system.

"Coordinates confirmed!

It read. Just after that, she prepared for take off and headed her way into UNSC space towards the isolated moon.

 _To be continued..._

 **That was it for now. I don't think there will be any action in the next couple of chapters, but we'll see how it goes. It took me long enough to figure out how to connect the plots of Red vs. Blue and Metroid Prime 3. At least I made it possible so there's that. Next chapter will come up for sure, but I can't promise you anything on when exactly is that going to happen. Next chapter will continue from where Samus encountered Grif for the first time. For those two people who wrote reviews, much thank you! Don't hesitate to write a review if you haven't already or even if you are hooked a bit on this cheap crossover of mine xD**


	3. Chapter 3: No Rest for the Weary

**Here is the third chapter, following up straight from where the first chapter started.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 3: No Rest for the Weary_

 _[Some time later...]_

"I'm sorry, who the heck are you?" Grif didn't seem to care on who was the person behind the alien-looking suit even though he asked who they were, as long as he was just left alone afterward.

"Name's Samus. Bounty Hunter, Samus Aran on behalf of the Galactic Federation. I'm here for-"

Samus got cut off by a scream of fear, coming from Grif himself. When Grif heard the phrase, "bounty hunter", memories of Felix, Locus, and their ferocious mercenaries came back to haunt him, making him scream in fear.

"OH, MY GOD! BOUNTY HUNTER!? I THOUGHT WE WERE FINISHED WITH THOSE SPACE PIRATE ASSHOLES! AAGHH!"

As Grif started to panic, he started running away, tripping into almost everything he was running into, catching almost everyone's attention around him.

"Wait, what? NO! It's not what you think! Just let me explain!" Samus hollered, to no avail.

"What on Sam hill is going on out there!?" Sarge shouted at a distance.

"Grif?" Simmons knew Grif's scream like the back of his hand, just as he heard it far away from where he was.

"What the hell is going on?!" Tucker asked as he came to where Grif screamed and quickly saw Samus standing on his right side. "Woah! Dude nice suit. Where'd you get that?" Tucker commented, not knowing Samus was a girl behind the suit.

"Long story. Anyway, can you let that orange guy know I'm not here to hurt him or anything?"

"Well, how am I suppose to know you are not here to hurt anyone around here? And who are you anyway? No offense, but your suit isn't really anything I've ever seen. Not even the ancient alien temple we found back at Chorus had such thing."

"I guess you guys aren't as bad as I thought then," Samus commented, though she was still having her doubts floating around inside her mind. "Anyway, I'm Boun- Samus Aran on behalf of the Galactic Federation." Samus was already thinking they have some trust issues with bounty hunters that they knew of from before, though she didn't really know if bounty hunters around UNSC space were of those from Space Pirates, like what Grif was yelling about. What if the Space Pirates that the orange soldier was talking about were the same ones that are responsible for all the troubles she's been through? What if these soldiers had already dealt with the same Space Pirates that she has faced in the past? Then they would have the perfect training for the Galactic Federation. All these thoughts have been coming through her mind like tsunamis hitting inside her mind. She put those thoughts aside, but before she could utter another word to the teal soldier, she felt something poke her back a bit. At that moment, she knew that trying to get these Reds and Blues' trust had to be earned harder than expected.

"I think it would be in your best interest to start explaining yourself right about now," a voice came from behind her back.

Another teal soldier came by, though they looked more female looking and slowly aimed her gun at Samus and started speaking.

"You might wanna start by saying, who you are, where you come from, and what are you doing in here?"

"Just as I expected even by the looks of that picture of you and everyone else here," Samus remarked.

The soldier behind Samus slowly went around her, inspecting her Power Suit and stood next to where the female soldier was standing, still aiming their guns at her. "Hmm... you don't look from around here or anywhere else known in UNSC space. Answer our questions before things get a little out of hand here."

Everyone out of the conversation soon gathered around the three of them, curious as to who in the orange-greenish like armor.

"Ok, so where do I start...?" Samus paused for a bit, unsure how to gain their trust as some unnecessary tension was already rising between them. "Well for starters, my name is Samus Aran. I come from another region of space under the auspices of a corporation called 'The Galactic Federation'. I was sent by the Federation to come here and convince you guys to join our cause against a species called Space Pirates."

"What?" The female soldier gasped.

"Species? Don't you mean the Space Pirate mercenaries?" The man behind the steel-yellow trimmed suit corrected.

"No," Samus said blandly. "I literally meant 'species'; a group of species called Space Pirates. They are not your ordinary type of human military mercenaries you all have faced before. They are ruthless alien species, who would do anything to conquer lands, societies, even whole planets for their own needs too. They also possess other types of technology found from other types of intelligent life, including our own."

Everyone around Samus all seemed confused, but Washington and Carolina were still holding Samus at gunpoint, not fully trusting what she really is saying. Tucker then stood out of the crowd, with an annoyed and frustrated look in his eyes.

"Oh please don't tell us we are going on another fight we don't need to get ourselves into again. Literally, our fight back at Chorus was already enough and you think we are just gonna join you and your damn corporation in a fight that's light years away from even the reaches of the UNSC? I think we'll pass."

"You don't understand!" Samus began to feel some sort of frustration, although she knew that if she showed this off, she'll come into problems with the two freelancers still aiming at her. She settled down a bit and started speaking more calmly. "If you don't wanna help, I get it but think about this for a moment. What if it was you that was fighting these type of monsters and you couldn't do it yourselves? What if it hanged on everyone's lives around this particular region? You would do anything, desperate, enough to look for help in trying to take down a galactic threat."

There was silence for a moment. Then Samus broke it off as she continued.

"These so-called Space Pirates won't hesitate in going from one solar system to another, ravaging anything they come in contact with and soon, they'll find this place where we are standing right now and seek to either conquer or destroy this region of space. When I was a kid, they destroyed the planet where I was born in. They took everything away from me; killed my parents, destroyed neighborhoods, cities, even the creatures called the 'Chozo' that took care of me, all gone." Samus' tone then turned cold. "You have no idea what these monsters are capable of."

Another moment of silence kicked in. Just a minute later, Carolina finally spoke, with her gun lowered.

"I'm sorry for your loss... I know what it feels like to lose something dear to you. As you might've heard, considering how you may have found us here, we fought a long battle against a couple of bounty hunters and their corporation and suffered so many casualties," she turned to Caboose before finishing her sentence. "Including the loss of a friend..."

"I'm sorry to hear that, too..." Samus said in return. "If you want proof as to what I'm talking about, do you have any sort of projection or holographic device I could use to show you the intel I have about everything we are doing in the Galactic Federation Force?"

"Yes, ma'am. I have an underground room that's fitted with a giant hologram, suitable for shooting clones of Grifs," Sarge said in return.

"Ugh! I hope we don't get to do a shooting range ever again down there..." Grif responded in an annoyed tone.

"Well, it all depends on how you behave towards the lady in front of us, Grif." Sarge turned around, facing his back towards Grif. "Now stop being a dirtbag and get your ass moving, soldier! C'mon follow me this way, everyone! We've got someplace else to be!" Sarge then started leading them towards their secret underground hologram bunker.

Just as they entered the meeting room they had installed months back, Samus started blankly staring around as if the room was somehow vaguely familiar to her. Tucker was watching her all along, just like how he has done with other girls in the past, much like Carolina, which ended him up getting punched in the chest very hard. He then stops staring at her and broke up the silence as they were entering the room.

"Hey um.." Tucker didn't know what to say, but nonetheless, couldn't resist to not say anything to Samus he then tried not to flirt, but instead try to change the subject that was flowing into his mind. "You never have seen anything like this, right?"

"I've been into many meeting rooms, but this one seems more advanced than the ones that the G.F.F. has developed in recent years." Samus was surprised to see such technology, but then again, she wasn't as surprised as she has seen this type of technology from the Space Pirates, which could mean that they already have gained access to UNSC Space regions, secretly. That, or maybe they've only seen it somewhere else and decided to replicate such tech.

"Oh trust me, ma'am, this is nothing compared to the shooting gallery I have prepared back from where we came from," Sarge was beginning to feel a bit cocky on his knowledge of such tech. "Grif, you should show her after we are done with whatever she wants to show us here."

Grif was beginning to feel aggravated. "You know what? I'm just gonna pretend I never heard that. Plus I'm too lazy anyway so good luck with that, Sarge!"

"Hey! Don't talk back to Sarge like that!" Simmons defended Sarge, much like he has always been doing since they knew one another.

"I can talk like that to however I like so SUCK IT SIMMONS! Also, kiss Sarge's ass! No one likes a kiss ass anyway!"

"Hey, he's our leader so just give some respect you DOUCHE!" Simmons barked back.

"At least I'm not the one being a kiss ass!"

"Would you please just stop ARGUING FOR GOD'S SAKE!" Tucker shouted.

"NO ONE IS TALKING TO YOU, BLUE!" Grif and Simmons shot back at Tucker at the same time.

"Would you all just SHUT THE HELL UP and let Samus show us whatever she wants to show us!" Carolina hollered at the three of them, who were arguing like little kids for a toy. She then gave a deep sigh and stated, "Just listen to whatever she has to say and then you guys can continue whatever argument you guys have afterward".

Samus was just watching the whole situation, in confusion as to why would they even fight and partake in pointless arguments. "Thank you, Carolina. Now let me show you all this."

She took out a device on what it looked like to be just a small circular flat object and threw it in front of the table they were all gathering together upon. A moment later, it threw off a big map on where the G.F.S. Olympus is located at, along with the whole Kalandor Region. Samus was then describing everything that the map was showing, including the objectives each Bounty Hunter was given, in order to have the Reds and Blues be as informed as possible about the whole entire situation. Everyone just listened, quietly. As she finished doing her explaining on the whole situation, Samus then called out everyone's attention, after everyone around her was giving an opinion to each other. "So, who is willing to save the galaxy once again by this new peril that may come to your place in a matter of time?"

Everyone was just staring at each other as if they were waiting for one of them to say or do something until both freelancers raised their hands to show that they were joining Samus.

"If it means into getting rid of this so-called 'phazon' and the Space Pirates abusing this substance that poses a risk to the whole galaxy, then you can count me in," Carolina said, with confidence in her voice.

"I'm with Carolina," Washington stated, with some doubt in his mind as he knew that everything they have done hasn't always worked according to their way. "I mean, as much as how scary it sounds, I don't think we do have a choice if we all just stay here and wait for them to strike at us".

"I'm not getting involved in anything related to fighting anymore," Tucker said. "I'm done with this kinda thing. Plus I'd already given up enough to say that I won't need to go back into fighting another war that ain't mine".

"What Tucker said," Caboose stated, agreeing to what Tucker was saying, considering how all this isn't gonna help bring his best friend back. "If it has nothing to do with bringing back Church, I'm not joining either..."

Sarge was also on both Tucker and Caboose's side as he just recently found out that even though he is hungry for battling a war, having no personal motive to do so has already drained his ability to do so unless it was about killing Grif of course. "Sorry, but if I have no personal motivation into all this, I can't join you for as much as I want to if you have any idea of what I mean."

"I'm with Sarge," Simmons said. "Whatever Sarge says, I will always be on his side".

"You know, as much as I hate to admit this, I'm actually gonna stick with Simmons and Sarge," Grif stated his part as he was trying too hard not to admit that he was being another kiss ass, just like Simmons.

"Hmph, and I thought irony wasn't part of your to-do list, Grif," Simmons remarked.

"Oh just shut up. Plus, I don't have the energy to do everything we've done back at Chorus once again. We are talking about saving a galaxy and I, for one, wasn't quite in the mood of saving a whole planet either so yeah, I'm not being part of this..."

Donut, however, was thinking about joining the fight, but then considered otherwise after he was hearing the others talk about it.

"If no one on my team is going, I'll just stick with Lopez and just start practicing my Spanish with him. It's something productive I love to do anyway, especially decorating our things around here with colorful stuff so you already have my word that I won't be joining you, Saturn, or whatever your name was". Donut then turned to Lopez and tried asking him some questions in Spanish. **[1]** "Tu que dices Lopez?" **[1]**

Lopez then turned his back around to everybody and stated in Spanish, **[2]** "Yo no voy a ir a ningun lado con Samus. Todos tienen sus razones en no ir a la batalla contra los Piratas Espaciales y yo tengo mis razones en que yo tampoco tengo ganas de andar matandome en tratar de arreglar las cosas que ustedes idiotas quebran las 24 horas seguidas". **[2]**

Samus just silently watched everyone express their own thoughts and opinions about this matter and a few moments later, she finally spoke.

"Look, I know you guys don't know me that well, but this is nothing compared to what you guys have fought before. These Space Pirates are nothing you shouldn't be throwing off as a minimal threat. If the Galactic Federation has found this UNSC Space region, it'll be just a matter of time before they come and conquer this part of space region, but it is entirely your choice. I'm not gonna force you to join me or anything, but do consider this in mind." Samus made sure she had eye contact with everyone around and she spoke once more, "If the choice that you are making right here, right now, would it be worth it? Would you regret it later on in the future? Or would it be wise enough to keep certain others safe from harm? This will all depend on the choice you'll be making right now as even the smallest decision can dramatically affect the outcome of this fight."

The sound of silence quickly filled the air around them as it flowed by for 5 minutes until Wash then broke the silenced air around them.

"Don't worry, Carolina and I can take care of all this. You guys should just stay put as we have already lost too many of our friends before and I'll be damned if it were to ever happen again. Plus it'll be great as we could contact you guys, if it were ever to come to us getting into deep trouble," Wash was then making a serious eye contact towards everyone's eyes. "I'm sure we can count on you guys, right?"

"If it comes to that, you'll know where to find us," Tucker replied with a slightly worried expression on his face as he couldn't bear to lose Wash or Carolina as he did with Church. "Please, just... be careful, okay?"

Wash then made a quick chuckle. "Since when are we ever not careful?"

"You're right I guess," Tucker grinned.

"Eh well if those Space Pirates aren't gonna be waiting for you guys to rock'n'roll, then I suggest you guys fight them off in honor of me!" Sarge exclaimed as everyone was staring at him with an annoyed look. "What!?" Sarge asked. "Did I say something wrong?"

"You clearly won't be getting any honor at all as you aren't even dead too! Plus you aren't even getting involved so just cut it out, would you?" Grif said as he was getting too tired of Sarge about such thing.

Sarge then turned to Simmons, seemingly ignoring what Grif said. "Simmons?"

"Yes, Sarge?" Simmons answered.

"Remind me to poison his orange juice tomorrow morning before he wakes up, okay?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Ugh! Really Sarge?" Grif was already starting to burst out of annoyance and anger. "Just screw everyone! I'm out of here! & Tell that Samus chick again that I'm not going or even showing up into any of her own fights!"

As Grif pushed Donut and Simmons out of the way, Samus watched everything that was happening and then asked, "Does Grif always act like this?"

"Don't mind him," Carolina replied with an assuring tone. "He's been having anger issues lately and the therapy sessions that Donut has been giving to him recently has only made him worse, but eventually, he'll get it over with".

"Hey don't blame it on me! I was only trying to help him, by making him color some coloring books and having tea parties with me too". Donut said in defense.

"Where the hell did you even get any coloring books around this place?" Wash questioned, wondering how many things has Donut been doing in these past few months.

"Oh um... me and Caboose went into one of the old warehouse buildings back at Chorus, where they had a lot of different children stuff in there, so we took'em".

"You WHA-" Wash then reminded himself that Caboose and Donut would do many weird things in their spare time and decided not to even question him any further. "You know what? Just forget it. I'm not even gonna bother with you both".

"I also grabbed some old DVD cases named 'Blue's Clues' and 'Dora the Explorer'. It was fun watching them all with Donut and Grif when he was falling asleep, but it didn't matter," Caboose said with a happy and calm expression, smiling at the thought of watching those shows with everyone in the room.

"Oh God..." Wash just facepalmed without hesitation.

"Blue's Clues?" Samus asked in curiosity. "I might've heard something about that before...," Samus then stared into space as she remembered having seen such an old show from her mother's old collection, back when her parents were still alive, back when everything was just a normal life, back when her life was soon going to change in a matter months, before the Space Pirates invaded her home planet. This thought in mind came from being a happy-nostalgic thought to a sad, depressing, and devastating thought. She was starting to feel like crying a river in front of everyone, but no. She had to stay strong. She had to show that no matter the cost, one had to move on and step forward in life, in order to keep going. If it wasn't because of her mother, sacrificing herself for her, she would've been dead a long time ago and never become the woman she is now.

Carolina stepped forward, next to Samus, and asked in concern, "Are you feeling, okay?"

"I'm fine it's just... nevermind," Samus then tried to change the subject as she put all those feelings away and then turned to Carolina and said with a serious tone, "So you and Agent Washington are the only ones coming with me?"

Carolina was then turning to everyone else, in order to see if anyone changed their minds, but the Reds and Blues never uttered a word and only stood still where they were, "I guess it's only the two of us then. Will your boss not be mad at you for not including everyone else in our group?"

"As long as I tried hard enough to convince you all and get you all informed about this, I'm sure the federation wouldn't mind," Samus reassured her.

"Alright, then when will we be leaving?" Washington asked.

"Whenever you guys are ready, but the guy who sent me here, Admiral Dane, would like you guys to be there in less than 24 hours or so, before the next meeting starts, so you might want to get everything ready and packed soon enough," Samus answered.

"We'll be sure to get ready in less than an hour so we'll catch up. Thank God we have a working pelican still after Sarge managed to destroy two others by crashing them into asteroids, surrounding the moon," Wash then turned to look at Sarge with a serious look in his eyes.

"Don't look at me Mr. Washington! I was merely just trying to learn how to fly a pelican, but I as much as I hate to admit it, Grif knows more than I do, but that still doesn't mean I ain't killing him in his sleep or tomorrow morning!" Sarge said, with confidence, as if he was pledging the flag of his country.

"Yeah, whatever..." Wash replied.

"I'll wait inside my ship for you guys. Call me when you're ready," Samus said.

"Wait, but how would we be able to call you if you don't have a similar integrated radio in your suit like we do? Wash was wondering since they all knew her suit was of a completely different origin than theirs.

"Trust me. You'd be surprised at what this suit can do, compared to yours," Samus replied, with a smirk on her face.

"Okay then... we'll let you know however we can," Wash then watched as Samus and the others were leaving out the room.

Carolina then stopped mid-way, until she saw Wash having a worried expression on his face through his helmet, standing there as he was staring blankly at the table. She walked closer to him and said, "You know if you don't want to do this we can always-"

"No, it's not that Carolina. It's just... I don't want to make the Reds and Blues suffer for the loss of us... just like with Church..." Wash cut her off with a small depressing tone as he was already feeling that he just wanted everything to stay like normal. He only wants the safety of his friends, but leaving them behind makes him worried that what if he and Carolina won't make it? What if something goes wrong and the Space Pirates track their location and invade the moon before they could've done anything here by staying and protecting their friends? All of this was making Wash's stomach turn until he was met with a hug from Carolina.

"Don't worry Wash," Carolina reassured him with a soft, motherly-like voice. "We've been through a lot and now it is not the time for you to be feeling vulnerable at this point. Quite the opposite, you should be feeling strong and very proud of all of us, or even Church's sacrifice. If it weren't for him, I don't think we wouldn't be standing here right now."

All of these words were making Wash feel much better, although he was still saddened at the thought of so many sacrifices that has happened in their past lives, even before Project Freelancer was brought to justice, but Wash knew they weren't all in vain. They all had a reason and it was to let others live a whole life ahead of them and to encourage others to keep fighting, no matter the circumstances of the situation.

Just after five minutes have passed, they stopped hugging and Wash then finally spoke, "Well then, what are we waiting for? We've got some work to do."

 _[To be continued...]_

 **So here you go! That was that for now. I'm extremely sorry this was posted late as there was a lot of correcting to do on this chapter (there are probably still a whole lot of different type of errors, but oh well :P). Once I finish the whole fanfic, I might update the whole thing as to the little errors I may have missed.**

 **Anyways, I do hope you can excuse me for this, as college has also been getting in the way quite a lot recently and the holidays were just as busy too. From now on, I'll try my best to keep this fanfic updated at least weekly or so. Maybe put up 2 chapters per week, but I doubt it, considering my conflicting schedules. Again, I can't promise you anything so expect the unexpected.**

 **Also, thank you guys for the reviews! Much appreciated! I will try to improve as I go so bear with me. I have so much in store that I'd like to add in the future, but I'm trying not to make it too long and boring as I just want to get to the main points of the story and be descriptive from there. Don't forget to drop a review in the future! All are welcome :)**

 _ **Below are the Spanish Translations of the chapter:**_

 **[1] -** "What do you say, Lopez?"

 **[2] -** "I'm not going to go anywhere with Samus. Everyone has their reasons for why they don't want to go to battle against Space Pirates and I have my own reasons for why I also don't wanna join either. I don't wanna be killing myself trying to fix all the things you idiots break 24/7 continuously".


	4. Chapter 4: Sooner than Expected

**Coming up now is the fourth chapter, following the events of the previous chapter.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 4: Sooner than Expected_

 _"_ Samus, do you read?" Wash was trying to reach Samus in order to see if she could pick up his signal as him and Carolina had a completely different set of radio tech than that of Samus. Again he tried to get an answer, "Do you read, Samus?"

"Yes, I read you Washington. Loud and Clear." Samus replied.

"Wow. Never imagined this would work," Wash commented with a surprised tone.

"You still got a lot more to see what my suit can do. It's entirely made from the Chozo, a peaceful race that once took care of me after my parents died."

"I'm sorry to hear that..." Wash expressed his sympathy towards Samus. Hearing something like that happen to anybody can be difficult to digest, even if it was also about his enemies have to go through that as a kid.

"It happened a long time ago. No need to worry," Samus tried to save his sympathetic feelings as she knew this from behind his tone on the radio. It's not difficult for Samus to realize what others feel about her just by judging their tone of voice or even their body language since she had practice in doing so with her fellow teammates back in the Federation Army, including with her former commander, Adam Malkovich. "Anyway here are the coordinates. I'm sending them to you via your navigation suit system you have."

Carolina soon intervened when she heard this.

"How do you know we have-"

"I managed to do a quick scan to your suits and that's what I got from you, Washington, and even the others when you and your friends were arguing during our last meeting," Samus explained. "Like I said, you still got much to learn about me."

"I'm sure we do. I'm starting to have second thoughts about trusting you already."

Carolina wasn't sure if she and Wash were doing the right thing in trusting her, but the only way to find out about her true intentions were to join her and see how it all ends up. Nothing new from what Carolina has dealt with in the past so if all goes wrong, they can both "take care" of her, just like they did with certain others.

"Then keep those second thoughts in mind until the end of all this. Only way to find out is when we go through this together, right?"

Carolina felt uneasy after she heard Samus say her last sentence. It was as if she had the ability to read her mind too. What if her suit allowed her to do such thing? Or maybe she has the ability to do so naturally instead of her suit's help. In any case, she has to keep a close eye on her for anything that Samus might do to them. Trusting people is one of the things she has found the most difficult to do ever since the disasters happened when her whole team was turning against each other back in Project Freelancer. However, after her bond with Epsilon and the Reds and Blues she gained a lot of hope that there was still good in a lot of people, even though Epsilon was just an A.I. fragment. Even with A.I.s, they are all based on the mind and personality of someone, much like how Epsilon was based on an A.I.'s memories, in which that A.I. was also based on the Director of Project Freelancer himself.

"Doubts aside, we should get going," Samus reminded them. "The Admiral is eager to meet you both. Take your time in saying your goodbyes to your friends. You never know what'll happen after we leave this place."

"Roger that," Wash said. "We still have Lopez fixing the Pelican, but I think he's nearly done.

"Sounds good," Samus replied. "I was starting to worry you wouldn't have the ability to travel light-years apart from here."

Wash gave a small chuckle.

"Haha don't worry. We already had a couple of test subjects riding the last 2 Sarge broke down."

"Wow, so you wouldn't mind using your friends as test subjects for such thing?" Samus asked, curious if this was true or not.

"On the contrary, Sarge used Grif and himself as test subjects," Wash replied. "Let's just say while Sarge was trying to learn how to drive a Pelican, those two traveled at great speeds probably light-years away from here, got back and crashed the Pelican instantaneously and returned with all the symptoms you can get out of a great impact like that. They did the same with the other one we used to have."

Samus was now beginning to see more clearly about their dumb actions and was half glad they aren't coming along, yet again their stupidity has made them come this far so it wasn't really surprising to hear stories like this out of the Reds and Blues.

"That's some interesting story you got there. Anyways, as much as I'd love to hear more about you guys, you should start saying your goodbyes and come along right after. We don't have a lot of time so make it brief."

"We'll be in touch." He put out his radio and kept the channel opened. Wash turned to Carolina afterward. "We should do our goodbyes to the others, while Lopez tries finishing up on fixing the last Pelican we have".

"Wash, do you think we can trust Samus?" Carolina asked as she wanted to hear what Wash thinks about Samus. "She seems to be shady in a way."

"As far as I know, it sounds like she has gone through so much in her life, probably as traumatizing than our personal history together," Wash explained with a reassuring tone. "We dealt something like this in the past so just give her a chance to redeem herself at least. After the fall of our team back in Project Freelancer, I had a lot of endless reasons not to trust anyone anymore, including A.I.s themselves but look at us now. We've gone far and you of all people should know this better than anyone else."

Carolina felt as if his statement was giving her enough energy to start taking some doubt away but then again, she still felt that precautions should be taken, in case they are both wrong about her.

"You're right," Carolina spoke quietly. "But that doesn't mean we should close down our guard on her. You never know the true colors of a person until you get to know them better at a personal level."

"Agreed," Wash said. "Let's go and let the others know we are leaving now."

Before they left, Lopez finally broke his silenced voice and spoke to them in Spanish.

 **[1]** "En menos de 5 minutos, esto estara listo para despegar," **[1]** Lopez informed them as he was finishing up fixing some loose wires underneath the control panels of the Pelican.

Wash and Carolina barely managed to understand one word he said, but whatever it was, **[2]** "minutos" **[2]** sounded more like he was about to finish up in a few minutes, after repairing the Pelican for more than a few hours.

"Okay, Lopez." Carolina said, nonetheless. "We'll be back in a few and thanks for fixing the Pelican for us."

 **[3]** "De nada," **[3]** Lopez replied.

* * *

After speaking to Wash and Carolina, Samus was laying on her seat inside her ship, feeling a bit exhausted for whatever reason. She began to contemplate on the things she has done in the past and how far she's gone in life. Even though her parents are dead, they would be proud of what she has accomplished in her life. Maybe this was meant to be, but if only Ridley and those malicious Space Pirates never targeted her home planet, she could be living a normal life, without a power suit, without Chozo DNA infused within her body, without having known Old Bird, Grey Voice, Adam, Anthony, Rundas, or her other comrades. But like they say, in every bad thing, there's always a good thing that comes out of it and for that reason, there's always something to fight for, something that keeps you going.

Just before Samus came to her senses, her ship's control panel came to life and Admiral Dane's upper body showed up in front of her. He looked like as if he was in a great rush and spoke loudly with some banging noises in the background as if they were getting attacked by something.

"Samus?! SAMUS! Do you read?!" The Admiral was beginning to sound desperate behind his tone.

"Yes, sir! What's going on?" Samus replied.

"There's an incoming Space Pirate attack on its way to Norion's orbit! I need you and whoever you are bringing with you to come as quickly as possible! We can't let these Space Pirates get a headst-"

"Sir!" A man in the background was heard before the Admiral was able to finish his sentence.

Dane turned his head to his right, ready to listen to whatever he had to say. "What is it?!"

"There is a least 3 Space Pirate ships coming to our way!" We have the heavy artillery to fight them off but we can only do much!"

"Do whatever you have to do to stop them!"

"On it, sir!"

Dane quickly turned his attention towards Samus.

"You know what to do Samus! Signing out."

"Wait, but what about-?"

It was already too late. Dane cut off the signal just before she was able to ask him if the other Bounty Hunters were already on their way there, in order to meet up with them and gain an advantage to fight off the Pirates.

"Damn!" She cursed.

Samus knew something like this was bound to happen.

"I need to let Washington and Carolina know about this before anything becomes worse."

* * *

Tucker and Caboose have been watching Wash and Carolina at a distance as they overheard some parts of their conversation between them and Samus. They didn't hear much, but enough to know that Samus knew pretty much a lot about them. For Caboose, it was interesting as he thought he could become friends with Samus one day, but Tucker thought otherwise, even though he really thought of hitting up with her at some point. He didn't mind not knowing what she looked like behind the alien suit, but nonetheless, she sounded hot enough for Tucker to put her on his list of sexy ladies.

"Hey, Tucker?" Caboose called for Tucker's attention just as they were seeing Wash and Carolina walking outside near the Pelican towards them.

Tucker turned his head towards him.

"Yes, Caboose?" He answered.

"Are Wash and Carolina gonna be okay?"

"When have they ever not been okay after huge ass fights against corporations like Charon Industries and Project Freelancer?" Tucker commented. "That's the real question."

"But they always get hurt in fights like that," Caboose replied. "No one really ends up fine after that."

"Dude they are the best of the best. I'm sure they'll be fine once they come back," Tucker reassured his blue teammate.

"We heard that," Carolina said as she and Wash were standing right in front of them, just as Tucker finished what he said.

"We never said anything wrong," Tucker blurted. Or did we?" He turned his head towards Caboose, giving him the expression to confirm what he said was right.

"Oh um... nope! We never did! But whatever bad things you might've seen, Tucker did it!" Caboose stated his infamous line of blaming Tucker for everything. After not having said it for a long time, he felt better just by saying it out loud.

"Really, Caboose?!" Tucker glowered. "I thought we were cool already!"

Caboose just gave a sigh and spoke. "I only wanted to say it just to make me feel better."

"Okay, so what's going on again?" Wash questioned both of them as he was trying to wrap his head around what was happening at the moment.

"Just forget it," Tucker skipped to his question about trying to figure out what was going on between them and Samus. "So is everything alright with you and Samus?"

"Aside from a couple of uncertainty with whatever she has in plan to do, we're fine," Wash replied. "We don't really know for sure on whatever she may be up to, but if everything she said is true, we really have to do this so, either way, we've got no other choice. For all we know, we could all end up dead if we don't do anything about it so just to be on the safe side, we decided to go."

"We've also decided that it was better this way for only two people to go as we don't want to risk all of us getting either captured or killed," Carolina continued. "We got Lopez to modify our Recovery Beacons so that it would only transmit a secured signal to this place only. It won't be doing a widespread galaxy-wide signal transmission as it used to anymore.

"Wait, but didn't Samus mention that she scanned all of us back in the meeting room?" Wash began to be uncertain that Samus may already have known about it.

"You said it yourself. She won't know about it since she scanned us all before Lopez managed to modify our Recovery Beacons," Carolina recounted. She looked around, making sure she wasn't around to overhear their conversation. "Also, make sure to keep a low profile in case she's hiding somewhere around here."

"Wait, did you just said she scanned us all? Tucker asked with a concerned tone, worried that Samus might know everything about his own likings and possibly his sex life.

"Yes she did," Carolina answered blandly at Tucker. "We don't know how she did it or to what extent has she gotten information out us whether it could go back to our early lives or not, but even the cooperation that she works for knows a lot from us too, so I wouldn't doubt they know each and every one of our own backgrounds."

"Well that's very reassuring," Tucker remarked with a nervous tone in his voice. "I really hope she wasn't bothered with what she learned about me. BOW-CHICKA-BO-!"

"STOP IT!" Wash and Carlina shouted at the same time, tired of having to hear that ever again.

"What?" Tucker challenged, as he didn't understand why would they stop him from saying his catch-phrase after a long time. "I haven't really said it for a long time."

"I'm sure everybody knows it at this point," Caboose stated the obvious, oblivious of the real fact on why everyone around Tucker hates it a lot.

"Caboose, just shut up okay? You ain't helping." Tucker groaned as he turned to both Wash and Carolina and decided to change the subject. "So when are you guys leaving?

"That's what we came here for," Wash answered. "To tell you guys that-"

Wash was immediately cut off when they heard a female voice, coming from Wash and Carolina's radio.

"Come in Agent Washington and Carolina! Are you there?!" Samus started to sound as if she was in the best hurry.

"Oh! Is it the orange-Grif looking lady!?" Caboose grinned, wanting to say hi to her on the radio. "You should say hi to her for me."

"Caboose, just... maybe later, okay?" Carolina replied in a somewhat annoyed manner, trying not to sound harsh on him at the same time.

Wash and Carolina both felt their privacy has been shattered to pieces as they were about to give their goodbyes to both Tucker and Caboose. They all turned towards Samus, who was the one yelling at a distance.

"What is going on?" Carolina answered for the group as she was wondering why Samus' voice sounded in desperation.

"The Pirates are what's going on," Samus retorted behind the radio. "They already started doing an invasion towards one of the Federation's flagships. Sooner or later, they'll reach a planet not far from there called, Norion, in no time and they need our help. I'm sorry, but you might wanna hurry up and get that robot of yours to finish quickly on fixing that Pelican of yours."

"He might be already done fixing it by now. We'll wrap it up and let you know in a few," Wash replied, unsure if it was even a right answer to give her, considering the circumstances.

"Copy. Just don't take too long. Over and out."

"Well, it seems we are gonna be heading our way," Wash clarified to their blue teammates. "Make sure you guys let everybody else know we are leaving now. That's if anyone cares of course. If anything happens, contact Kimball and I'm sure she'll be able to help. I put the coordinates in this little tablet device I found laying around in the Pelican."

"Sure thing, Wash. I won't let you guys down," Tucker reassured him. After everything they've been through, Tucker and Wash have become more close than the time they first met. He didn't have a more stable friendship with Carolina, but even now Tucker knows her limits and that helped him a lot to make his friendship more stable with her.

"And please... make sure to keep everyone safe here, Tucker," Carolina ordered, knowing that she can put her faith in him more than anyone else in their group. "You are the only one in this group that's capable of leading everyone to safety and you proved yourself quite a lot during our fight against the chairman and his expendable mercenaries."

"Wow," He gasped, shocked at the fact Carolina trusts him to that extent.

"What is it?" She wondered.

"I'm surprised you trust me a lot like that," Tucker stated.

"Well if you want, I can go tell Sarge or in fact, I can go radio him to do that job right about now," Carolina jested at him.

"NO NO! It's fne! Thanks though," He shot back. "By the way, when are you guys coming back?"

"We don't know for sure, but from what Samus has told us in the meeting, it could take a few days or so, depending on how much time they would want us there," Carolina explained.

"Good cuz I thought you guys were probably going to take longer than that."

"Like I said, we don't know for sure so expect the unexpected," She replied.

After Tucker and Carolina finished their conversation Wash then called for Caboose's attention.

"Caboose."

"Yes, Mr. Washington?" He replied.

"I can't promise you anything, but there is one thing I can say to you, buddy," Wash handed him over a picture of him and Caboose, without their helmets on. "Remember that time when you caught me off guard without my helmet on and you found an old camera laying about at our base? I let you take a picture with me just once and told you to give me the picture and never tell anyone about it. Well, I changed my mind, so keep it and do whatever you like with it."

Caboose was just staring at the picture for a long moment. He then turned his head towards Wash with a smile behind his helmet.

"Thank you... Wash! You're the nicest person ever!"

He ran towards Wash and hugged him as Carolina and Tucker were only watching the whole situation, silently and shocked at the fact that Wash didn't mind for someone like Caboose to take a picture with him, especially with his helmet off. When they finished up their hug, Wash continued to explain.

"This is something that I've put in mind in case we don't come back. Something that Church wasn't able to leave behind as something to remember him by."

"Dude, not even I get something like this?" Tucker pleaded with slight jealousy.

"C'mon you know Caboose was affected by Church's death more than anyone else and you should be one of the first people to understand that," Wash shot back at him.

"I guess that's fair," Tucker said in a more understanding manner, a bit ashamed of what he said. "Sorry about that. By the way, you look awesome with that beard you are growing."

"Oh shut up. It itches a lot whenever I have my helmet on," Wash complained. "And I can't even use my hands to scratch myself whenever it does itch. The worst feeling ever!"

"Hey Tucker, I can share the picture with you if you want," Caboose stated as he was trying to hand over the picture to him.

"No thanks, Caboose. It's yours to keep."

"But then you won't be jealous that way."

"I'll be fine, Caboose. Don't worry."

At that moment, Lopez came back from the Pelican and informed both Wash and Carolina about it.

 **[4]** "Ya esta listo," **[4]** Lopez said with his usual robotic voice. **[5]** "Cuando quieran irse." **[5]**

"Um.. grrrahcias... Lopez," Wash replied as he was having a hard time trying to say "thanks" in Spanish.

 **[6]** "Un placer Señor Washington y ustéd también Señorita Carolina," **[6]** Replied Lopez. He never was annoyed to serve the freelancers but was more frustrating in serving the others, especially the Reds, whom they boss him around almost every day. He soon left on his way to their base to fix another Warthog that Sarge just recently broke not long ago.

Carolina then watched what time it was on her digital clock within her visor and realized they spent more than 5 minutes after they got in contact with Samus.

"I think we should get going Wash. We don't want to be late now," She then looked towards Caboose and Tucker, before leaving to the Pelican. "Take good care!"

"Don't forget what I said, okay?" Wash reminded Tucker about what he needed to do in case anything goes wrong.

"You can count on it," Tucker nodded. Wash returned a smile to him and soon followed after Carolina.

"Bye Wash and Carolina!" Caboose waved at both of them towards the horizon until they weren't seen again inside the Pelican. Both him and Tucker watched as Samus' ship and the Pelican took off into the atmosphere and vanished without a trace soon after.

Afterward, Caboose then called for Tucker's attention "Hey Tucker?"

"Yeah?" He replied.

"Do you think they'll be coming back?"

"I told you, man. I'm sure they will be," Replied Tucker, trying to sound confident himself as he wasn't sure if they were going to be fine or not.

 _[To be continued...]_

 **That was that. I'm currently writing up the next chapter and having some difficulties to make things up so if you see anything that's nonsense, please forgive me lol. Anyway, as always, please leave a review! It helps me out quite a lot!**

 _ **Below are the Spanish Translations of the chapter:**_

 **[1]** \- "In less than 5 minutes, this will be ready for take off,"

 **[2]** \- "minutes"

 **[3]** \- "You're Welcome"

 **[4]** \- "It's ready"

 **[5]** \- "Whenever you guys want to leave."

 **[6]** \- "A pleasure Mr. Washington and Miss Carolina,"


	5. Chapter 5: The Tip of the Iceberg

**Next up is the fifth chapter, starting where the last chapter left off with Wash, Carolina, and Samus leaving to G.F.S. Olympus located near Norion.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 5: The Tip of the Iceberg_

The Pelican flew more intensely than what the freelancers expected. Just as Carolina was taking off, it was going just like any other Pelican both her and Wash have been into. After it had enough height to make it out of the moon's atmosphere, it immediately zapped quickly, as if they were breaking through space and time altogether, creating a dark blue circular motion around them. Carolina didn't know if the Pelican had automatic controls for anything like this, but the only thing she knew at that point was that they were both going to throw up after their trip was over.

"DOES THIS THING HAVE ANY ANTI-MOTION SICKNESS OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT?!" Wash shouted from the back seat above Carolina. He couldn't even hear his own voice, due to the loud noise that the Pelican was making around them.

"I CAN'T HEAR YOU AT ALL BUT ALL I'M GONNA SAY IS TO HOLD ON!" Carolina shot back at him.

She knew that shouting wouldn't do much to communicate with each other. She couldn't even turn around to shout at him directly at Wash since she was feeling like some powerful invisible force was flattening her to her seat. All she was able to hear from Wash was a lot of yelling possibly out of anxiety or fear.

Just after a couple minutes or so, the Pelican stopped all of a sudden and Carolina's body soon felt like it was back in shape, but with her insides feeling all jagged up from the intense trip.

"Ugh!" She groaned. "I... WASH... ARE YOU OKAY BACK THERE!?" She didn't notice that she was still yelling, for the fact that her ears were still ringing out of the loud noise.

"W-w-WHAT!?" Wash shot back, not even noticing that he was yelling himself either. "I THINK I'M- WAIT!"

He quickly took off his own helmet, not even knowing if the Pelican had a life support system installed for interstellar space traveling and started throwing up into a plastic bag he found near his seat. Luckily for him, the life support system was activated just before the Pelican took off back from the moon's atmosphere.

Carolina was finally able to take out her safety belt and turn her head around towards Wash, only to feel lightheaded and dizzy soon after and quickly fainted. Just as Wash heard a thump and finished throwing up, he looked down and saw Carolina unconscious on the ground. He took off his safety belt and reached down towards the unconscious freelancer.

"Carolina! CAROLINA! Are you okay!?"

Wash's ringing ears were gone and he was now able to tell the difference between a loud or low volume of noise. Although he was still feeling lightheaded and felt like his insides were about to become grounded meat. It didn't matter now that he had Carolina to worry about than his own health. Again he tried getting an answer,

"C'mon! Are you able to hear me?!"

Nothing.

Just as Wash didn't know what else to do, he instinctively took off her helmet and checked for a pulse to see if she was still alive. He also managed to check for a breathing and both were on the green that indicated she was still alive but knocked out. He quickly went to the back of the Pelican and searched for anything to help her breathe or even just a small bottle of water to see if she was able to wake up with some fresh water. To his luck, there was only a small water bottle lying about but it was only half filled.

"Must've been either Sarge or Grif who used this before," He uttered to himself. "This has got to be the worst trip ever, of all time."

Wash quickly went to where Carolina was laying and threw some water on her helmetless face. Carolina soon moved her head and slapped Washington in the face, which managed to knock his whole head almost to his back.

"Ah! What was that for? I was only trying to help you out!" Wash didn't know why would it be her first instinct to do such thing after someone was only trying to save her life.

"That's for taking off my helmet without my consent," Carolina replied, still feeling a bit disoriented as she stood up and put her helmet back on.

"Really?!" Wash shot back as he was annoyed at the fact that Carolina didn't seem to be appreciative of what Wash was really trying to do.

"To be honest with you, I actually felt like slapping someone, just to make myself feel better. Kinda actually worked out. Thanks by the way," said Carolina with a more appreciative tone than before as Wash was only staring at her with an annoyed expression look on his face.

"So this is what Sarge and Grif both felt when they were quickly phasing through random distances," commented Wash, looking around some of the things both Sarge and Grif left behind. "I'm surprised they're both still alive after having to do this like 3 times?"

"Well then I suppose we should keep it together to prepare for another trip back, cuz this ain't going to be the last thing we're gonna be dealing with," clarified Carolina.

As Carolina tried to get in contact with Samus or anyone else nearby, Wash grabbed his helmet and put it back on just as he started to gaze out the window in front of them to see where they were. Much to his surprise, there was a ship out of a whole crowd of them that was heading their way at a distance. It had an ominous look and it seemed like the ones that Samus has shown them back in the meeting room.

"Um... Carolina?"

Wash called out for her attention as she was busy trying to get in contact with Samus for a while, but no signal was coming in.

"What is it?" Queried Carolina, not noticing her annoyed tone of voice towards Wash.

"I think we have some more important things to worry about..."

"What do you m-"

Just after Carolina joined Wash, she managed to take a glance at the incoming ship and looked exactly like one of the ships Samus was warning them about to take a look out for. It would've been nothing other than a Space Pirate fighter ship, looking almost identical to that of the so-called Zebesian Pirate Ships.

"We gotta move!" Ordered Carolina. "Wash, go back to your position and use those controls in front of you to shoot them while I try getting us out of here! Go, GO!"

"Yes, ma'am!" Wash complied.

Wash quickly went back to where he first sat, activated the weapon controls, and was ready to take down the Pirates. Just as Wash was finished locking on them, Carolina switched the main pilot controls to manual and initiated the flying maneuvers. She didn't know where to go, but wherever they were, it was too dangerous to stay there any longer. She tried locating the G.F.S. Olympus, get in contact with anyone from the Federation, and tried getting in contact with Samus if she were to be around.

"Carolina!" Exclaimed Wash, with a worried tone. "There are more ships on our 3 and 9!"

"Don't you think I know that already?!" She remarked.

"I'm just saying!"

Just moments later, the control panels in front of Carolina started beeping and notifying that there were incoming missiles filled with an unknown highly radioactive substance. Could it be the same substance Samus talked about during her briefing? Whatever it was, there was no time to think about such thing and only try focusing on getting out of the mess they were in and get in contact with either the Federation or Samus as soon as possible.

"Wash! Try shooting them as much as you can! Things are gonna get a little bumpy! Hold on!" Notified Carolina as she was doing the best she could by evading those missiles. At this moment as much as she hated to admit it, she wished that their former pilot from Project Freelancer, Four Seven Niner, was here to pilot this Pelican as she would be doing a whole lot better than what Carolina was doing.

"I don't think our guns aren't doing much to them anyway. These ships are all covered with some weird plating armor that's protecting them from conventional weapons!" Replied Wash, just as he saw those missiles explode in mid-air with a blueish-like color.

"Well, then that'll make it even more interesting, right?!"

"What!?"

"Just try to keep them at bay! If it won't destroy them, at least you can try slowing them down!"

"This is by far the most stressful day of my life already! You know that right?!"

"We've been through a hell of a lot worse!"

Just as both finished their conversation, they managed to hear their radios coming back to life and a familiar voice was coming through.

"Washington! Carolina! Are you there!?"

"Samus! Where are you!" Questioned Wash as he was busy trying to repel the pirates away from them.

"The G.F.S. flagship is just around the corner of Norion's orbit. Head your way there and the Federation will try to cover you as you land in the docking area. It'll be the only one open as soon as the Federation has sights on your ship. You'll be able to see my ship there too so get a move on!" Explained Samus

"We see the planet you're talking about. We're on our way there! Over and out!" Clarified Carolina, just as she prepared to dodge more incoming nuclear-like missiles.

"They're more of them in almost every direction!" Wash blurted as he saw more Pirate ships trying to surround them. "These Pirates just don't give up do they?!"

"If Samus was right about one thing is that these Pirates aren't the ones to give up easily on just about anything!"

"Watch out!" Shouted Wash just before they felt one missile hit the Pelican real hard.

"That's gonna scratch the paint," Carolina said to herself, still wishing Four Seven Niner was still here with them.

"I hope we don't die of radiation poisoning after this!"

After a few moments of surviving a wave of Pirate attacks, they finally arrived near the area where the Federation flagship was.

"This could be it!" Stated Carolina, with some relief behind her tone.

As soon as they arrived into the area, a lot of those Pirate ships were getting destroyed with the same type of weapon artillery they had, only these shots seemed to penetrate through the Pirate ships, destroying them completely. The Federation must have slightly more advanced weapons than that of the UNSC, but whatever the case was, both Wash and Carolina were feeling a lot better to finally have someone back them up. Soon after, the Pelican's radio system was activated when a signal was coming through and it seemed that it was coming from the flagship itself.

"Come in, unidentified vessel! Please confirm your identity at this moment for safety measures!" the voice demanded.

"This is Agent Carolina," she answered. "We are the Reds and Blues or in other words, freelancers, that your fellow bounty hunter, Samus Aran, has sent here. It is only me and my other partner, Agent Washington. No one else from the Red and Blue teams has come with us."

"Copy. This is Admiral Dane, the commander of the G.F.S. Olympus. Make sure to meet me in these coordinates. Get in your best hurry to arrive here before things get any worse out here. Signing out."

"Well, so much for getting involved, right?" Wash commented as he was already annoyed at the fact that they'll be dealing with more Space Pirates and this time, alien-like creatures.

"We are lucky to still be alive at this point," Carolina pointed out. "So long as we are doing something to prevent this from happening back at UNSC Space is going to be worthwhile."

"I guess you're right," replied Wash with some sound of confidence. "Let's go do something about it then."

Carolina silently complied with what Wash said and flew in towards the docking area of the flagship, Olympus. In there, they saw Samus' ship parked there and Carolina started landing the Pelican near her ship to the right as there were two more landing points in the area.

As soon as the freelancers got out, they saw a lot of chaos going on. Those Space Pirates looked a lot more terrifying than when shown in the hologram meeting room back on the moon. Some looked more like Junior, the alien creature Tucker gave birth to, only they had clear blue plating armor. Others who were seen with lighter grey armor, their heads looked a lot like fishes with mandibles that have needle-like teeth. And then they saw Samus, helping other Marines fighting off the ferocious Space Pirates.

That is when they first saw what Samus was capable of. Her arm cannon was able to shoot like a machine gun with shots that looked like small yellow-like spheres. In some occasions, she was able to pull off bigger shots as it seemed like she also had the ability to charge her weapon for better firepower. They were in total shock about what was happening around them, but they had no time to stare at what was going on and they knew for sure that something must be done to help prevent this mess they were seeing. As Samus finished off a couple of Space Pirates, she finally managed to look at both freelancers and shouted.

"Get over here! Some of the rooms on this ship are getting raided by Pirates! If you can, help along the way and get to the Briefing Room ASAP!"

Both freelancers nodded as they complied and just when they caught up with Samus, they saw a marine, collapsing towards the ground as he was thrown in mid-air through a window right in front of the docking area above them. The three of them looked helplessly as they saw a giant thing jumping right through the shattered window and landed in front of them, staring at them with dark colored eyes as it roared loudly. It looked a bit like the other Space Pirates, only this one looked mutated with blue veins covering part of his immense upper body. It seemed like these type of Pirates has survived some sort of effects of Phazon Corruption, as Samus highly suspected hence the knowledge she had about their biological experiments back on Tallon IV.

"Oh God! What the hell is this thing!" Carolina never saw anything like this in her whole entire military career. She would prefer to have a normal human enemy or even face her main competitor in Project Freelancer, Tex, or the psychotic mercenaries, Felix and Locus anytime soon.

"Oh c'mon! And this is our welcoming party now?!" Wash commented in horror as he saw the Berserker Lord coming at them, ready to attack.

"Leave it to me!" Samus walked in front of them, readying her arm cannon towards it. "I'll catch up with you guys later just get to the Briefing Room and let the Admiral know I'll be there as soon as I've taken care of this thing!"

"Are you sure you're gonna be alri-"

"Just GO!"

Samus cut off Wash before he could finish his last word. Both of the freelancers left the area as soon as Samus ordered them to leave for the final time. It was at this moment that everything they've seen by now has been almost exactly what Samus has described before. They were no longer looking for a way to see the truth behind Samus as they've seen enough to know that if this were to happen on UNSC Space, where Pirates could raid every ship and area they could find, it would end up badly.

As they traversed through various rooms, they saw death everywhere. There were corpses here and there, both being from Pirates and humans. It was pretty bad to see even through the eyes of a kid. They were seeing turrets shooting at Pirates, while Marines were trying to get the upper hand, in which some managed, but the rest tried to no avail, much of the freelancers' frustration. However, the moment they stepped into the Xenoresearch Lab, they saw an injured Marine, blindly shooting at the Pirates behind a crate, not being able to concentrate on his gunfire due to his injuries. They helped the Marine fight off the Pirates shooting at him. At that moment, much to their surprise, they felt it was somehow easier to handle Pirates than the human counterparts that they used to fight before. They were still more frightening, but their appearance was the least of their worries.

"You alright?" Asked Wash, concerned about what was happening around them.

"Yeah, thanks. I thought I was a goner for a moment," the Marine said with slight relief. The Marine took a look at both Wash and Carolina, noticing that they weren't from around here since their armor and appearance look a lot different than what he has seen before. "Who are you guys exactly? I don't suppose you both are from around here unless you guys are a pair of bounty hunters."

"We aren't exactly bounty hunters. We are part of another space region under the auspices of the UNSC," Carolina explained.

"I heard about that before... The AU mentioned something like that in one of its announcements the previous day or so. Something about granting some sort of Red and Blue soldiers from the UNSC Space access to the ship or whatever. ...Ugh!"

The Marine started to groan as he was holding his hip. He had a large scratch mark that penetrated through his armor. The wound didn't seem life-threatening, but it seemed like one of those Pirates managed to puncture him pretty good with one of their scythe weaponry they had seen.

"Are you able to walk?" Wash inquired the Marine as he saw the poor guy struggle in standing up.

"I'll be fine," the Marine shot back. "The medical room shouldn't be too far from here. You guys do what you need to do. I'm sure the Admiral is waiting on you and the other hunters so don't waste time."

As soon as the Marine left the room, they turned around towards the ground floor as they heard a lot of banging noise and soon they realized that the whole power in the room went off. There were three Pirates, 2 of them with slight-looking heavier armor than the other lone one with light-armor at the ground level as one of them had a glowing green-like energy cell that seemed like the source of what was keeping the room lit with the main power.

The three Pirates then headed their separate ways, each of them taunting at both of the freelancers of the fact they weren't going to escape the room alive. Much to Carolina's annoyance, she shouted at them, readying her dual SMGs as Wash soon followed along.

"Wanna play, huh? All right. Ready or not, here we come!"

* * *

 _Meanwhile..._

"Give it all you've got you Phazon-cultured freak!"

Samus didn't hesitate at gunning down the mutated bioweapon as she had a lot of experience doing so back on Tallon IV. As she scanned the creature for more information, her scan revealed that no standard weapon fire could hurt the Berserker, but only its unprotected shoulders. Even so, it wouldn't be enough, unless she could somehow, exploit her way through using Phazon to her advantage against this creature. She didn't have a Phazon-based weapon or anything else to penetrate through the head's armor, but what she could remember since her last encounter with Dark Samus is that throwing the Phazon-based projectiles it fires back at the target was an effective way of taking out enemies with their own weaponry.

"Ironic on how everything based on Phazon is its own weakness to itself."

Just as she was caught off-guard, the Berserker took advantage of this moment and tried slamming Samus with its powerful arms. Much to Samus' quick reaction time, she managed to barely evade its attack and shot her Power Beam continuously to its right shoulder, until it cracked open. It bled small amounts of blue blood, possibly due to the fact that when infected with Phazon, a creature's blood turns to a blueish-like color. The Berserker started groaning in pain and roared towards Samus in rage.

"That hurt, huh? That's only the beginning," taunted Samus at the creature.

The Berserker was then crouching on its knees and hoped to catch Samus in a huge stream of Phazon coming out of its mouth. Samus got hit by it, but due to the stream of Phazon being a less concentrated version than that found in other places, it didn't deal heavy damage to her suit, but enough to drain a quarter of her suit's energy.

"You wanna play rough? Fine. I'll tag along."

Samus was sidestepping her way around it, shooting its other shoulder with the few missiles she had at a minimum capacity. It was enough to stall it in its place. As she was taking a small deep breath, the monster lunged projectiles, filled with Phazon energy towards her. This was her chance to use its own power against it. She began to shoot these orbs as soon as she saw them coming out of it, cracking the Berserker's head armor. It wasn't enough as the monster stood up and began to regenerate its wounded shoulders and roared even louder than before, filled with extreme rage.

The monster began to go berserk as if its name wasn't enough to describe him as one. It tried running towards Samus, swing its arms around as he would be throwing punches to the ground, creating a shockwave of electricity powered by Phazon. It was hard enough for Samus to keep up at this moment, but just like any other time facing creatures like this, she was able to evade every attack it tried to do against her, only having missed one attack from it. The bioweapon managed to throw in a good punch on Samus, knocking her all the way back against a group of heavy-duty crates.

"Ugh... that kinda hurt a bit," commented Samus, trying to stand back up.

The Berserker roared at her, enraged to still see her alive and ran towards Samus, only to miss by a few inches just after Samus managed to evade it once more. This was her chance again as the monster stunned itself against the wall. Samus spammed everything she could against it on its shoulders, wounding it once more. In its defensive action, it tried regenerating once again while throwing orbs of Phazon energy at her.

"No more regenerating for you, freak!" Samus said with satisfaction as she shot the orbs back at the creature, causing its phazite armor to crack open. Once again, she spammed everything she could against it, this time, on its exposed head. The Berserker groaned in pain and in a desperate attempt to save itself from getting killed in its last moments, it tried grabbing Samus in order to throw her out in space, but because it was disoriented, it fell in front of the dock entrance's electrocution failsafe, killing it in an instant. Its corpse then managed to float out in space, until Samus witnessed a Pirate ship crashing into it, turning it into nothing but ashes.

"Glad that's over," Samus said with a deep sigh. Just after taking a small break from the recent battle, she followed after the freelancers and hoped they have already arrived at the Briefing Room safely.

 _[To be continued...]_

 **Sorry, this took long enough. I'm trying to keep up with this and my busy schedule so bear with me as I go along. As you can see, I made this part of Prime 3 to be slightly reversed and changed so that I could be able to write an original story, while still combing both the universes of Red vs. Blue and Metroid altogether using as much of the canon plots as possible from their respective parts. I took long enough to actually try to bring in some original story on my part and not copy off the whole entire plot of Prime 3, because then most people who already played or seen Prime 3 will easily be able to predict just about everything I would have in store for them so do expect some slight changes to the plot. Next chapter will be up in the near future so stay tuned! And PLEASE! Leave a _review_! For those who have left a review, thank you so much! It helps me get motivated too whether its positive, negative, critical, or non-critical.**


	6. Chapter 6: Assault on Norion

**Well after a long time, here is the next chapter, continuing where the last chapter left off with Wash and Carolina.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 6: Assault on Norion_

The Space Pirates weren't playing around when they decided to put up a fight against the freelancers. Even though they were one of the lowest ranks in their military force, their weapons did quite some damage on both of the freelancers' armors, much to their frustration. Wash was trying to take down two pirates at once while Carolina was following the lonely Pirate who was carrying the stolen power cell.

"Err! Get back here with that cell!" Carolina was beginning to lose her patience as she was running towards the Pirate for a few minutes already, evading most of her shots. "Wash! How are you doing down there!?"

"Why the question?! Isn't it obvious enough by the sound of me struggling?!"

Wash was trying to keep up with dodging every attack the two armored pirates were trying to give. One of them has already grabbed him by the neck and threw him against the glass panes in the room, hurting his back by the impact. Even his own armor wasn't enough to protect him as the Pirates have far more strength than the average human. Just after evading several slashes against one of them while the other tried to fire at him, Wash immediately grabbed the Pirate's arm that was close to him and pulled him in front of him as a shield. The other Pirate, as bloodthirsty and unforgiving as they are, killed his own comrade in the process while trying to shoot Wash constantly with his beam weaponry.

"Good job, idiot! You killed your own kind!" Wash taunted the bloodthirsty Pirate.

The Pirate seemed not to be bothered by what he said, only gave a maniacal laughter and said in a grotesque voice with the sound of a lizard-like animal.

"He deserved to die the way he did. Fate has led him to this. Now human, it is your turn to face the same end!"

Wash immediately recognized that Samus was not lying about anything when she said that Space Pirates gave no mercy even to their own kind. Just before Wash could do anything, the Pirate roared in a ferocious manner and charged at him, with his scythe ready to impale him in the heart. Upon doing this was the Pirate's last mistake as the Pirate was sprayed with lead in its mouth, killing it instantly. Wash turned around to see Carolina standing above him, carrying the power cell that the pirates tried to steal.

"Nice timing," said Wash with a big relief as he already ran out of ammo, trying to take out the pirates' armor.

"You're lucky I managed to capture that cowardly Pirate with the power cell before you've gotten yourself stabbed by one of them," said Carolina.

"Well, I had a Pirate shield. His corpse would've protected me. I think..." Wash replied with some doubt about what he just said.

"Yeah... I hope you know these scythes are capable to pierce even one of the strongest armors. If that dead Pirate's armor was already weak enough, you could imagine what would've happened if I wasn't there to help," explained Carolina.

"Yeah, you're right," replied Wash. "Let's get this over with and get out of here."

Carolina jumped down to Wash's location and inserted the power cell from where it was taken off. As soon as the room was fully lit, the emergency shutters started to activate and closed them inside the center of the room.

"Geez! Now, what!?" Complained Wash.

"Shh!" Carolina silenced Wash. "Do you hear that?"

Both of the freelancers were hearing small tiptoeing inside one of the panels and around them where the small ventilation shafts were. It sounded as if there were small insects crawling towards the room they were locked in until a small insect-like android crawled on top of Wash's shoulder, which made Wash slightly panic in fear.

"Oh my God! Get off of me!" Shouted Wash as he threw it against one of the locked emergency shutters, causing it to explode. "What was that thing?! Some exploding insectoids or something?!"

"Um... Wash?" Carolina called for his attention, staring at a group of insectoid-like mines that came out of nowhere. "We've got a situation here!"

Wash turned around and much to his surprise, there were a lot more than he would have imagined. He began to panic even more and desperately tried to find a way out of there.

"We've got to get out of here! And NOW!"

"I'm with you!" Carolina replied, trying not to sound frightened herself. "Wouldn't want to stick around to find out what their full potential is!"

* * *

Just as Samus entered the first few rooms while on her way to the Briefing Room, she saw the disaster that was left by the Space Pirates in their wake. Most of them were either dead or retreating. The Marines and the rest of the crew who survived the attack were all trying to catch up on what has happened over the past couple of hours. Samus saw faces of pain, weariness, anger, frustration, and even relief as some of them was celebrating the fact that they were still alive and managed to go through whatever hell the Space Pirates gave them. She didn't want to bother those that were still struggling to cope with the Pirate attack so she went towards one of the Marines who looked relieved and asked them if they've seen a cyan and steel colored soldiers pass by.

"Hey, have you seen a pair of cyan and steel colored soldiers come by around here?"

"You mean those two soldiers that have thicker armor than most of us, Marines, and are not from around Galactic Federation space?" The Marine replied.

"Yes, that's them," Samus answered back.

"They helped us fight off the Space Pirates. If you've seen what they can do, you'd be amazed."

"I'm sure this is why the Admiral wanted them to come help get rid of the Space Pirates for good. Although I don't know if their friends would be just as good as they are, however," Samus commented.

"Why do you think so?" The Marine asked with curiosity.

"Let's just say when I met all of them, they would constantly be arguing with one another, their way of handling things is very off, and their hospitality was one of the weirdest I've ever seen from anyone."

"Unless you spent a lot of time with them, you never know until you get to know them better."

"I'm sure you're right, I guess. Anyway, thanks for letting me know they came by."

"Yeah, sure no problem. I heard they were going to the Briefing Room to meet up with the Admiral. You're doing the same?"

"That's right. I'm just a little behind as there was a giant cockroach that had to be stepped on."

"Funny, coming out of you," the Marine gave a small chuckle as he rarely seen the bounty hunter have even the slightest sense of humor. At least from what he has seen.

"Well, I got to get going. Don't want to be late like last time. Is everyone here gonna be fine?"

"Just a few bumps. We'll be fine since the infirmary is just north of here."

"Alright. Take good care!" Samus said her goodbyes as she hurried her way through en route to the Briefing Room.

As she took the shortcut that's only accessible for emergencies only, she ended up in the Xenoresearch Lab room. Just when she was passing by the window panes, she saw the freelancers trapped within the floor below her, along with what it seemed to be like a group of small insectoid mines ready to blow themselves up towards them. Wash was seemingly panicking and looking for a way out, while Carolina was shooting at them trying to repel them away.

"WASH! CAROLINA! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!" Samus shouted behind the thick glass panel to see if they could hear her, but to no avail.

She tried shooting the emergency shutters with charged shots and missiles, but everything was literally useless against it.

"Argh! How am I supposed to help them?!" She asked herself in frustration.

Just as she was pondering on what to do, she heard the door where she came from open up and quickly prepared her arm cannon at whoever was getting through in front of her, only to see it was no one else other than Rundas himself. She raised down her arm cannon and was relieved to see Rundas again.

"Sorry to scare you. I began to follow you as soon as I saw you back in the corridor," said Rundas.

"It's fine, but I really need your help to get these two inside out of there."

Rundas went to take a look down the center of the locked room and saw both of the freelancers struggling to survive the wave of crawlmines. They turned around and finally managed to see both Rundas and Samus. Both of the trapped freelancers were shouting at them. All Samus and Rundas could hear was nothing, but muffled shouting and small explosions as more of those crawlmines were coming at them from all directions just as Carolina seemingly ran out of ammo completely now.

"Let me go around and see what I can do!" Rundas dashed towards one of the closed shutters and took a look at it for a second. "Hey, Samus! You should get your missile launcher ready!"

"What do you have in mind?" Samus asked in a quick session.

"I'm going to freeze the whole shutter and once it freezes, it'll be in a weakened state. This type of alloy might be invulnerable to almost anything, but at low temperatures, it should be able to shatter with a simple concussive blast."

"Alright, let's do it!"

Rundas started freezing the whole shutter as Samus prepared her arm cannon, readying her missile weaponry. The explosions were getting louder from the other side, causing Samus to lose some of her patience and started demanding Rundas to hurry a little bit more faster.

"You might wanna hurry now!" Said Samus,

"Almost there!"

A few seconds later, it got completely frozen, signaling Samus to shoot it with a missile. As the missile took impact towards the frozen shutter, it crumbled into pieces as the freelancers immediately broke out of it just as it finished shattering.

"Thank you!" Wash gasped as he tried to take a deep breathe just as he got out. "Don't know what we could've done without you."

"We owe you one," said Carolina, appreciated for what both Rundas and Samus did to save them.

"Don't beat yourself about it," Rundas reassured both of the freelancers. "It's our job to protect each other if we are going to be working together from now on, but yeah. You owe us one."

"Right," agreed Samus. "We should get going though. The Admiral might be waiting for us and we're probably the last ones to go there."

"Then let's go meet this Admiral in person then," said Carolina as she turned towards Wash.

"Ok, I just... nevermind. Let's get going." Wash was still trying to digest what happened back there where he and Carolina were stuck with a group of crawlmines. He didn't like the fact that they all looked like angry insects out of a nest that recently got destroyed.

The four of them dashed out of the room and managed to get to the Briefing Room just in time before the Admiral could begin his briefing. Gandrayda was already there, talking to one of the crew workers in order to get an update on what was happening out on Norion's orbit. Ghor came soon after, having a portable Gatling Gun on his robotic right arm with an integrated shield on his other arm. He was covered in Space Pirate muck, not seemingly bothered by it as he put away his weapons and stood in position, ready to hear out the Admiral.

"Hm... I see you've all been busy kicking some Space Pirate ass, am I right?" The Admiral commented with a warm smile on his face.

"That's correct!" Exclaimed Ghor, sounding exhausted as others around him gave a slight nod.

The Admiral turned towards both bright and dark colored pair of soldiers. "If I'm not mistaken, you both are part of the Reds and Blues. Why did the others not join our cause, if I may ask?"

"We wanted to make sure everything that Samus said is true," explained Washington. "Plus, we weren't even sure what kind of things we were going to be dealing with, until now at least."

"When it comes to Samus, she's one of a kind to not be messing around with," replied Gandrayda. "She's always serious whenever I try to crack jokes around her so you shouldn't have a problem trusting someone that serious."

"Don't exaggerate. I'm not always like that," Samus shot back at her.

"We have a history of getting backstabbed by even the closest people we used to have so I'm sure you could understand why we have problems trusting anyone at this point," Carolina explained.

"Then you might want to reconsider working on your trust issues as that could leave to devastating consequences on the battlefield as soon as I'm finished with what I'm about to tell you now," the Admiral explained as he continued on. "As you may know, most of the Space Pirates have either retreated or been wiped out, but the invasion is not over yet. Those that have retreated are joining their partners in crime on Norion. You must stop the pirates from doing enough damage to our main base or else they'll have full control of Norion and this whole entire space region will be out of contact completely from the outside colonies. Another thing is that along the way, make sure to find out what are their real motives of doing such thing as the Valhalla, A.U., and Norion attacks are no coincidence. We don't have that much time so I suggest you get going!"

"Roger that!" Samus blurted.

"Consider it done," Rundas followed.

"May the best side of this war win!" Ghor exclaimed with full pride.

"We'll see how far these pirates will handle a woman like me," Gandrayda childishly boasted.

The Admiral turned his attention towards the recent recruits. "You both! I want a word real quick."

Samus turned around and gave a slight nod, showing them that everything is gonna be fine as long as they keep it together and left with the other hunters. Wash, along with Carolina, went upstairs and stood in front of Admiral Dane.

"Yes, sir?" Said Wash.

"If I'm not mistaken, you two are the top of your people, right?" The Admiral looked at them in the eye as if he was trying to stare deep at their souls.

"Yeah... you could say that." Carolina hesitated to think about it for a moment feeling a bit uneasy on the Admiral's stare. She then realized that almost everyone in their group has gone through a lot and made a lot of improvements in their combat during the previous war they both got themselves into.

"Good! Then I know we will be able to count on you. I'm sorry we've got you into this mess, but we need all the help we can get to stop these bastards from invading future space colonies that may as well be including the one you come from."

"We'll do everything in our power to stop them," Carolina then turned to her left towards Wash. "Right, Wash?"

"Right. We will do our best," Wash stated.

"That's all I wanted to hear. Now, go follow the other Hunters. This invasion will not wait for any stragglers."

The freelancers both nodded and headed their way towards the Pelican at the docking area. They met up with Samus at the docking area, where she had her ship parked on another platform near the Pelican's landing point.

"So what did Admiral Dane tell you?" Samus asked, concerned about it.

"Just wanted to confirm what we told him initially when we arrived near Norion's orbit, only this time, he wanted to look at us in the eyes to see if we were telling the truth about who we were exactly," Carolina explained.

"Oh. Well, we should get going then," Samus replied.

"We'll follow after," said Wash.

Samus then quickly got on her ship and set off to Norion as both Wash and Carolina followed after her towards Norion.

* * *

As they arrived on the planet's surface, they saw the planet already being ravaged by the Space Pirates as a couple of motherships have already been sending down troops into various places on what seemed to be the Federation's main base in the middle of a mountain range. They also saw the planet looking a lot more like a lush forest world. There was no water banks, seas, or lakes. The atmosphere didn't look as normal as it is in many other places they have visited.

"On second thought, I'm starting to feel like Iris wasn't a bad place to live in after all. Even that moon feels more ecological than whatever this planet seemingly has," stated Wash after seeing Norion from above its surface, covered with nothing but dense forests and an empty mountain range containing the Federation's main base of operations.

"It could be worse," replied Carolina as she was trying to land on higher ground near the landing point where Samus was headed. "I don't know if you remember this one planet, but Sidewinder was probably one of the worst planets we've ever been. After—" There was a small pause of silence. "After Maine... was taken over by Sigma and threw me off a big cliff, I grabbed by the ledge with my grappling hook, but it wasn't enough to save me from the nasty fall. As I woke up from the fall, buried under the snow for God knows how long, I was hurt in every way you could imagine and I'm not talking about physically hurt, but mentally. I also had to survive the harsh conditions of the planet for days, weeks, stranded there alone."

"Oh God, I'm uh... I'm sorry to bring that up," Wash was feeling guilty for bringing up such memory, especially the thought of what she has been through at the time.

"Don't sweat it," said Carolina as she tried to calm Wash's guilt over her. "There was nothing anyone could've done. At least now that I think about it. Anyway, let's get ready and see how we can help defend this Federation base."

"Yes, ma'am," Wash complied as Carolina finished parking the Pelican on top of a side platform near one of the base's landing site. They soon began grabbing their weapons and equipment and headed out to meet up with Samus.

Just as they headed towards the main landing site where Samus was, they began to look around them. There were a couple of turrets on their sides, shooting at Space Pirate aircraft flying around them. Marines were guarding the main entrance as they seemingly killed all the Pirates in the area.

"Ready to do this?" Samus asked the pair, confident that they'll get through this pretty quickly.

"Ready as I'll ever be," replied Wash.

"Like dinner's served," Carolina followed.

 **Well, I hope it was worth the wait. Yeah, this chapter isn't pretty long like the other previous chapters. Initially, this chapter was supposed to be twice as long, but because it was too long after I finished writing it and proofreading, I cut off half of it and I'm currently saving it for the next one and continuing from there. Also, I tried doing a weekly update on this, but I failed miserably. Writing fanfics isn't as easy as I thought it would be, but I won't be giving up on this yet. I have so much in store to write for this fanfic so again, please bear with my boring way of uploading stuff.**


	7. Chapter 7: Shadows of the Past

**Sorry, it took months to finally upload something out of this story. I wasn't feeling in the mood or had enough motivation after so much struggle has been happening in my life. It seems like a repeated "story of my life" type of thing, but trust me, when you become a writer, it's always hard to come back and have all the motivation in the world to keep writing something you're initially excited about since your new to it. At least from my own personal experience anyway. But enough about me. Let's get digging into this chapter, shall we! ^^**

 **Here comes the next chapter in where the adventures at Norion begin.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 7: Shadows of the Past_

As the three of them walked towards the entrance of the base, one of the marines guarding the area came to them and let them know of the current situation around them.

"Stand to for a moment," the Marine ordered. "Beyond this point, our situation isn't looking any better. The Pirate attack has knocked out all of our three generators and disabled the planetary-defense system. The cannon was our only weapon capable of taking out orbiting ships. We need you three and the other Hunters to get the generators back online and restore power to the cannon so we can repulse this assault and take out the pirates as quickly as possible. Here are the coordinates to the generators. Good hunting."

"Much appreciated," spoked Samus for the group as the other two freelancers nodded in response.

"So Generator A, B, C huh?" Commented Carolina as she was looking through the map on her visor.

"Like going back to Kindergarten," said Wash as he wandered off in his mind, thinking of the terrible time he had in his early years of school. "My first year of getting bullied and my family weren't really around to help me go through whatever I went through all those times."

"Sorry to hear such thing," sympathized Samus. "Are you gonna be ok though? Because we are going to need you all the way till this is over."

Wash came to as soon as he heard Samus finish off her last sentence. "I've been through worse. I'll be fine," he blurted.

Samus then went back to looking at her map and studied it for a while with the freelancers. After some time, she managed to make out a plan for the three of them.

"Alright I think I've got something," she spoke as she double checked on her map again. "Let's move forward and see if we can at least try going our separate ways when we get to one of the top floors inside the base. Once there, I'll start off with A. Carolina, you go turn up B, while Washington takes care of C. That's assuming we don't run into any heavy stragglers and have access to all of them from the Cargo Hub in all of these directions."

"It doesn't always go as planned, but we'll try making the best of it," said Carolina.

"Sounds like a good plan to me, but yeah. I'm with what Carolina said," Wash replied.

"Let's just get going. At least we have a start on what to do," Samus sighed, annoyed to hear how they are so negative about how their initial plan is going to work out.

As they went in, there were pirates already slaughtering multiple marines inside the base. There were also multiple crawltanks guarding the dark corners of the base, which started to infuriate the three of them as they tried pushing their way through. When they arrived at the Cargo Hub, there were bodies of both pirates and marines everywhere. No sign of life was detected from Samus' scan visor, but sentry drones from Space Pirates were the only ones left that were patrolling what was left of the area.

"These drones are starting to annoying the heck out of me already!" Wash complained as he already had enough of robotic things trying to kill him. Ever since he faced off Epsilon-Tex and her robotic clones, he was full of it.

After finishing them off with ease, they realized that access to all of the generators are blocked off. The pathway towards the other end of the Cargo Hub that leads to Generator A and the control tower is blocked off by fallen debris. The blast door that leads to Generator B is offline and there was no way of activating it back online from the side they were in while the door leading to Generator C has a damaged circuit board that runs through the door making it impossible to go through.

"The Pirates really don't want anyone to activate those generators, huh?" Stated Wash in annoyance after having dealt with the drones.

"You said it," replied Carolina.

"Should we try going back to our ships and just fly towards each generator and get them quickly activated?" Wash wondered.

"It's too risky," Samus shot back. "Who knows if there are pirates swarming about near each of the generators. Plus, you've seen all those pirate ships flying around. We don't wanna catch their attention and have them start an assault we won't be able to handle on our own. We were lucky enough to land here without attracting too much attention."

"Right," Wash complied. "Damn, nothing at all goes as easy as one would think, would it?"

"Like I said, even if we think everything through, there's always something that'll get in the way," Carolina reminded them, causing Samus to once again, get annoyed by her negative attitude.

Samus was beginning to lose some of her patience and said frustratingly, "At this rate, nothing will be achieved if you keep on being negative about it. I'm sure if you would quit saying so, maybe something good will come out during the process."

Carolina groaned in anger but calmed herself as she realized that Samus was right. Nothing good comes out if you get negative about everything around you, but then again, she was being realistic. She's made a lot of mistakes in the past and this time, she'll be making sure history doesn't repeat itself again.

Wash took a closer look at the debris blocking the path to the control tower and Generator A. He noticed that some of the debris are covering what seems like an opening through; enough to fit in while crawling.

"Hey, Samus? You might wanna give this a little scan if you can," suggested Wash as he wanted to confirm if what he's seeing is true.

"Sure, let me see," Samus complied.

 _Scanning... Scan Complete._

 _Debris is covering a passage._

 _These pieces can be pulled out of_

 _the way with enough force._

"Just like you said, there is a small crawlspace in between the fallen debris. Here, let me try pulling some of it out of the way. Watch yourselves," Samus began using her grapple lasso towards it and pulled multiple pieces out of the way, enough to see a clear passage underneath. As she pulled the debris out of the way, the pieces of metal made a lot of noise; enough for anyone near the area to hear.

"Well, that's one way to do it," Wash commented. "Ladies first."

As Wash let Samus go in first, she activated her morph ball, much to the freelancers' astonishment.

"How the hell!? What!?" Both freelancers blurted simultaneously as Samus in her morph ball form went through the passage without much effort. Their faces were wide open of surprise on their looks as they just witnessed Samus literally turn into a ball that could easily break a normal human being without protection or proper use.

"Oh, right! I forgot to tell you both that I can turn into a metal ball using one of my suit's features called Morph Ball. It's something the Chozo gave me to assist in any type of stealth missions from back in the days," explained Samus as the pair of freelancers were crawling through the crawlspace.

"I'm starting to feel like this Chozo alien species were thousands of years ahead of us technological-wise," said Wash realizing he was now sounding like Simmons for a moment.

"You could say that,"

"Just be glad Charon Industries never found out about this particular stuff that Samus has," said Carolina as she then turned towards Samus. "I'm surprised you don't even need a full AI to run all of your suit enhancements."

"Nope. Not at all," replied Samus as she just remembered that their own enhancements from Project Freelancer don't always work out without a proper AI along with them.

As they reached the other end of the Cargo Hub, they saw the control tower from where they'll be needing to go in order to activate the cannon. There were three panels that all described each generator being offline. Until they were on, there wouldn't be any type of access to the elevator leading to the cannon controls.

"If we want this mission to go any faster, I might suggest you both to go ahead while I stay here and see if there's anything I can find or use to fix that broken circuit board," Carolina suggested.

"You sure?" Samus asked.

"I'll be able to handle myself. Don't worry about me," Carolina reassured her. She then turns to face Wash. "York taught me a thing or two about fixing circuit boards related to the problem we have here."

"He sure was one hell of a fighter, but a terrible master of unlocking. Never thought he was also an engineer," Wash replied.

"Well he was also a terrible engineer, but that didn't stop him from being the person he was."

For a moment, Carolina lost herself in the thought of having to see York one final time. She would do anything for just one small moment with him and tell him how sorry she was in the way she rejected him all because of her own obsession with trying to beat Tex at all costs. She would tell him how much she misses him. She wouldn't beg for forgiveness, but only want to let him know that she now knows and understands the mistakes she has done that led to his depression and eventual death. Just let him know the guilt that has haunted her after Church showed him York's recorded logs about himself and his feelings for Carolina. If only York was here, she could just let go of everything weighing on her shoulders about such thing.

After a brief silence and watching Carolina staring blankly at the air around her, Wash walked towards her and said softly, "Are you okay?"

Carolina snapped out of it and frowned at him. "I don't know," she replied. "We haven't done much and I'm already having flashbacks from the past. It's like my past is coming back to haunt me and I just can't help, but to try and think about our comrades... our comrades from Project Freelancer. All of this is basically like back in the days and I'm glad we are here to help prevent something that might affect us back home and all, but... I just... I don't want to lose anyone else," she looked at Wash in the eyes, ready to drop into tears. "Including you... Wash. I can't bear the fact of losing you like I lost York. Not again!"

It didn't take long before Carolina started to shed some tears and Wash, not knowing what to say to her, came to her aid and hugged her as she let her inner struggles go.

Samus was only standing still, motionless. She personally knew how a person can be affected by a tragic past, much like her own mother getting killed in front of her by the hands of Ridley and seeing a whole civilization who saved her, disappear out of thin air. It seemed like this York guy they were talking about was a person very close to them, especially to Carolina. She wasn't the type of person to try and comfort people in their grief, but she tried her best to do so either way.

"Look, I know how it feels like to lose people close to you. Trust me, this happened to me when I was only about 3 years old as I've told you about what happened to the colony I was from," Samus tried to keep her cool and not let her emotions get the best of her as she continued, "Try not to let your past get in the way and think about it not as memories, but as a force that pushes and steers your way through the present and into the future. It's what still keeps me going after all this time."

A moment after Samus finished her last word, the pair finished hugging and Carolina felt relieved with Wash's hug and with what Samus has told her.

"Thank you. Both of you. It really helped," she said as she tried getting some air after crying with her head resting on Wash's right shoulder.

"That's what friends are for," said Wash with a soft tone.

"Just don't beat yourself up anymore," Samus said calmly. "If anything, be glad you still got each other and if you all survived a recent worldwide war against a powerful corporation, I'm sure you are more than capable at dealing with this type of situation."

Carolina cracked a small laughter, making Wash feel better seeing her like this.

"Ok well let's not waste any more time," Carolina turned around to head back and tilted her head to the left, partially facing the other two. "I'll go check and see if there's anything around here that I can salvage and use for our circuit problem." As Carolina was feeling a lot better, she was now able to concentrate on her objective. The other two nodded at her as they made their way to Generator A.

"Is she going to be alright?" Samus asked Wash with a slightly concerned look on her face.

"She's one of the best soldiers I've ever known. I trust that she'll be able to handle herself just fine."

 **I hope you had fun riding the emotional rollercoaster because I did hahaha. As always, please leave a _review_. It would gladly improve my motivation to keep writing so if you wanna keep this story up and running, reviews would actually help. For those who already did in the past, thank you! You're one of the reasons why I gained motivation and gotten in the mood to continue doing this after quite a long time. ^^**


	8. Chapter 8: The Battle of Norion Part I

**This chapter starts off with Samus and Wash going on their way to try and activate Generator A.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 8: The Battle of Norion_

"Watch your step."

"Right. It is pretty dark out here. Can barely even see where I'm going and the only light sources around here are pretty much both of our suits emitting light," Wash was feeling uneasy for the fact that everything inside the conduit area had a deathly silent air around them. "Damn! Should've checked every nook and cranny of that ship before coming here."

"Let's just get this over with before-" Samus was cut off by a loud mid-sized explosion from the other side where they were standing.

"Jesus! What the hell is going on?!" Wash was thrown off his feet by the shockwave of the explosion. As he got up, he tried to take a look at what was happening in front of them. There were a couple of marines yelling to fall back as they were slaughtered by what appeared to be a pair of Space Pirates, equipped with both beam and melee weaponry.

"Foolish humans!" Roared one of the Pirates. "No one will be able to stop us now that we're so close! For the new dark queen!"

"What?" Samus was shocked to hear the phrase, "new dark queen". She didn't know exactly who were they referring to, but whatever the case was, it wasn't for any good intentions for one thing. For now, all she was focused on was on their main objective. She was ready to strike at any moment possible.

"Listen, either get out of our way or share the same fate as your dead comrades!" Wash knew that the Pirates wouldn't care whether they die or not for a cause they deeply believe in. This only made the Pirates laugh maniacally as they charged at both the freelancer and bounty hunter.

"Very well. You have officially signed your death warrant," Samus taunted them before shooting a charged shot at one of them, quickly knocking them down temporarily, before they managed to get up just in time as Samus tried shooting them continuously with her power beam. The Pirate blocked most of her shots, but it wasn't long before Samus managed to pull off his shield with her grapple lasso and finished him off with a final blow towards his head with a cartwheel kick, cracking his skull instantly.

Wash quickly headed towards the other Pirate as he dodged every shot the Pirate tried throwing at him. As he drew closer to the Pirate, he began to wall-run towards him and right before making a final jump, he threw a knife directly towards his mouth, making him shriek in agony. The Pirate quickly drew his scythe in a desperate attempt to finish off Wash, but it wasn't long before Wash managed to pull the knife out of his mouth, spun towards the Pirate's left side, and stabbed him directly into his skull, piercing through the Pirate's light armor as the Pirate dropped dead afterward.

"You're good with that knife," commented Samus as she just finished off the Pirate that was next to them.

"Years of practice is all it takes," Wash replied, pulling out his knife from the dead Pirate's skull. "They are quite more fragile than I imagined though."

"Yeah, but I recommend not to underestimate them. They may seem fragile, but they can be a real pain when dealing with a whole group of them if you are not careful enough. Some may even be smarter than you think."

"Roger that," said Wash confidently.

There was another loud explosion, but this time, it felt more distant and it seemed like it was coming from the outside of the base. The ground didn't stop shaking for 10 seconds straight as if there was a small earthquake happening around them. Dust started falling off from the ceiling while cracks started forming all around the whole ceiling above them.

"We better keep moving. This place won't last forever if this keeps up," said Samus, readying up her arm cannon in case there are any Pirates hiding from above the small dark spaces leading to different large vents.

"Yeah. This place has already given me the chills anyway. Let's go!" Said Washington as he equipped his trusty magnum, along with his knife in his left hand.

Another explosion was felt, but this time, it caused some of the stuck debris on top to fall down behind them, shaking the ground that almost caused the pair to lose their balance once more.

"Damn! How long is this place going to hold?" Wash was starting to wonder whether they could get out the way they came or look for another way out after activating the Generator ahead of them.

"Not long enough if we stay here any longer. We should move on ahead while we still can," replied Samus as she hurried down ahead.

"Wait, but..." Wash saw something ahead of Samus until he came up with a quick conclusion that it was a proximity bomb. "Samus, STOP!"

Just when Samus was on the brink of stepping into the proximity bomb, it still activated in a quick session, but due to her fast reflexes, she managed to evade its shots that fired around it and detonated right after.

"Geez... that was a close one," said Samus as she backed up to see if there were any more ahead. "There's bound to be more around here somewhere. Watch your step."

"Watch my step? Girl, you almost got knocked out by that prox bomb down there," replied Wash.

"Well, it still counts to do so, right?"

"Yeah, whatever. Just try to be more careful this time around."

"Right."

* * *

Carolina has spent the past 10 minutes looking for something useful, but it seemed as if someone has already picked everything clean around the area. It would explain why the only things that were standing around afterward were the Pirate drones. The Pirates never seem to let anything that may seem useful to them go to waste.

"Damn it! Why did I choose to stay behind looking for something I'll probably never be able to find around here. I'm just wasting time if anything," Carolina said to herself as she was desperately trying to search the dead Pirates and marines she could see, to no avail. "Looting dead corpses ain't my thing either. Disgusting..."

Just as she finished complaining about what she's been doing was turning out to be meaningless, she managed to find a worn-out torch gun out of a dead marine, laying near a dark ventilation shaft that the Pirates might've missed along the way. She hoped for the best if it still worked as she turned on the lighter for it. To her surprise, a small beam of fire lit up at the end of the small cylinder. "Yes!" She exclaimed to herself. "Finally! This might make things work a bit faster than I expected."

She hurried down to the door's circuit board and did some quick fixing with the torch gun as all it took was to connect some of the loose wires first and weld the broken slots back together. After she was done welding the circuit board, the door next to it powered up automatically. She felt relief for a moment, but at the same time, she felt uneasy as she didn't know who or what would be waiting for her on the other side. Whatever the case is, she knew she would have to be ready for anything if it meant to have those generators activated as soon as possible.

As she entered the room on the other side, her life support system was detecting traces of radiation from beyond. Her armor was enough to keep most radioactive substances away from her body, but she wasn't sure what type of radioactive substance was being detected as it was found to be from an unknown source. Could this be the radioactive material that their ship detected from those Pirate ships? Whatever it was, it still did not give her any reason not to press forward and so she went on.

As she arrived at Conduit B as written on her map, all she could see was her own suit lighting a small distance around her. One thing she did notice is that her suit wasn't the only thing glowing in the dark. Something else on the other end of the conduit was making its surroundings glow in blue. She pressed onwards and her suit was already giving a biohazard warning to her. Yes... she was right. The radioactive substance that's been detected all along was the same as the one detected by the Pirate missiles shot to their ship. It was a pool of a blueish, gel-like substance; the same properties that the radioactive substance those missiles had all over their warheads.

"What the hell is this?! I have never seen anything like it..." Carolina was shocked at the fact that such a radioactive substance even exist and for it to be emitting so much radiation and energy was unbelievable. Her suit was constantly beeping to get to a safe distance, but it didn't seem as if it was penetrating through her suit at dangerous levels, however.

At any rate, she decided it was best to leave it alone, but there were even more of those radioactive blue liquids. They were located on the ceiling, ground, pretty much anywhere you could go. There were signs of a massive fight or raid as most vents were all broken apart, debris scattered as giant confetti, cables around the conduit were ripped apart, and the ceiling was seemingly unstable as there were cracks covering more than half of it, but something strange caught her eyes. There were small organisms feeding on many of these dense blueish pools. as if it was the only food source available to them. It didn't look like they were being affected as bad as an ordinary organism would be from such an irradiated place. They kept feeding on them with a seemingly endless hunger and never bothered to run away whenever Carolina was passing by near the blue liquid pools.

Just as she turned to a corner in order to head outside towards the entrance of Generator B, something went crashing inside the base, which immediately made her lose her balance for a moment as the ground shook violently. The blueish pools that were left, had splattered almost everywhere among the debris. To her luck, there wasn't any on her, but whatever was left of the roof on this side of the base, it was gone for good. As she managed to get a hold of herself and scan her surroundings, there was a dark figure among the fallen debris and chunks of metal. She couldn't make out what it was, but it looked like a being made out of that substance she's been seeing all over the place. It gave an unsettling, macabre laughter before it disappeared out of thin air, leaving Carolina speechless and paralyzed out of shock. Never in her life has she felt frightened like that very moment when a demon-like being just appears in front of you, taunts you, and leaves you as frightened as a little child seeing something in the dark, watching your every move.

After a few moments, she began to feel like she could move again, but her stomach was still feeling as if it was turned upside down in a tight knot.

"What... the hell... was that?!"

* * *

After Wash and Samus went past the trouble of finally gaining access to the East Docking Area, they realize why it wouldn't have been easy to land their ships close by. The turrets installed on each side of the docking area were already broken apart, causing vulnerabilities from incoming aircraft attacks, Pirate crates that were mostly blocking their way were scattered everywhere, and there were at least eight Space Pirate guards, wandering like hungry predators lurking a for anything that can get their way. They quickly ran towards one of the giant crates in front of them before any of them noticed any movement from the pair and started spectating their surroundings. It almost didn't look like they could get into the Generator Access room at all due to the vast amount of Pirates searching for any possible intruders in the area.

"Damn it! What do we do?" Whispered Wash as he was trying not to make any noise with the crates making creaking noises behind their backs. The explosions and aircraft that were flying nearby were loud enough to cover their own noise, but Pirates that were nearby would still be able to hear anything fishy around them.

"Well, it won't be long before any of those Pirate aircraft spot us in the open here so I say we should just keep our cover and try calling for some backup. See if anyone that can help are near the vicinity."

Wash tried calling for anyone who was close by and started by calling out the names that popped up in his mind.

"Rundas. Gandrayda. Carolina. Come in! Are you able to hear me? Over."

Nothing. Wash tried again.

"Does anyone read me? Over." Nothing. "Jesus! There's not even a signal here."

Samus took a good look above the entrance to the access area with her scan visor and it detected a radio jammer installed by the Space Pirates, with shielding that prevents any form of conventional weaponry to penetrate it.

"There's a radio jammer up ahead. These Pirates must be trying to cut anyone off for those who get anywhere near the generators."

"Well, that's just great," frowned Wash.

"We can take them one by one, but being the two of us here might make it easier for them to spot us," said Samus as she turned to look at a pair of Space Pirates seemingly arguing about something.

"I told you! I'm the one who's gonna be killing The Hunter!" Exclaimed the first Pirate. "You should remember the reason we came here in the first place!"

"You're just as weak as the other Pirates! I shall have the honor to kill The Hunter and give our Dark Queen the head of our enemy!" Roared the second Pirate.

"All you care about is that 'Dark Queen' of yours since you left our homeworld and started harvesting phazon along with the other crew members, whom most disappeared without a trace. It shall be in my doubts that your queen wasn't the reason why almost half of the crew are gone! Not to mention how she's seen us, not as allies, but enemies. The Hunter had no business to be there after the Federation landed to steal our phazon and equipment so whatever happened to you and the others that came back is due to that creature you brainwashed-idiots call, 'Dark Queen'."

"How dare you to speak to our Queen with such mock!"

Both Pirates didn't stop arguing and Samus was still questioning who was this "Dark Queen" they kept arguing about. She feared for the worst, but could it possibly be...?

No!

It couldn't be since she saw a whole dimension fall, along with that malicious entity she once fought for the final time before she escaped. The only way out was that last portal she had access to before everything went dark, almost letting a whole group of ing escape with her. She turned back to Wash, who was still waiting for a signal, as she tried to erase her thoughts on one of the worst-case scenarios.

"Ok, I'll go and take out these two Pirates, while you take down that bigger Pirate on your left side. Got it?"

Wash groaned. "Ugh... why do I always have to deal with the bulky ones?"

"Hey, if you wanna take these two angry Pirates arguing, then you are more than welcome to deal with them."

"On second thought, I'll handle this one."

"That's what I thought. Now, I'll go first and as soon as the other bulky one notices anything, kill him, but do it as quietly as possible."

"I've done this before, you know?"

The two then began their separate ways.

When Samus struck at the right timing, the two Pirates were already too late to realize it was the same Hunter they were arguing about killing. The first Pirate swung his scythe but nearly gave a hit to Samus as she jumped over him and shot a charged beam towards his back, stunning him. This gave her enough time for Samus to strike for an attack towards the other Pirate, who had some shade of blue veins on parts of his exposed skin, including both of his eyes. This gave Samus chills and sent her in a quick variety of flashbacks when she first witnessed the Space Pirates's experimental creatures that were infused with phazon. Nevertheless, it didn't stop her from quickly getting rid of it, before he had any chance of hitting her with his phazon-covered scythe. Right afterward, the bigger Pirate started to take notice on Samus but before he could call on the others, Wash immediately hopped behind his back, covered his exposed lower mandibles to reduce any shouting or yelling for his comrades, and started stabbing him with his trusty knife in the back, chest, and face, as the Pirate fell to the ground, lifeless. The Pirate that Samus first stunned was already moving back on his feet again and started roaring at her before she finally put him out of his misery.

"I really hope that didn't get anyone's attention," said Samus to herself as she pressed onwards to the next crate in front of her.

Wash joined up with her and as soon as they both peered above the small-sized crates, they saw one Pirate seemingly taking a call from someone. It seemed like their jammers didn't affect their way of communicating with the outside, considering how both of them weren't able to get a hold of anyone on the radio. It didn't take long before he started out ordering everyone to search the grounds as there were intruders spotted in the area from a Pirate ship that spotted three dead bodies.

"I knew we should've gotten rid of the bodies," said Wash

"Too late now," replied Samus as she stood up and started firing at the Space Pirates in front of them.

"This is gonna get a little bit dicey," Wash said to himself as he grabbed his dual SMGs and started running to the right side as he was firing his weapons, catching most of the Space Pirates off-guard.

Samus began to unload everything she had as soon as she saw Wash flanking them on their side. Everything around them began to be chaotic as the whole fight was loud enough that it got at least three Pirate ships' attention. More Pirate troopers were getting deployed, while ships across the bridge were aiming their sights on both Samus and Wash.

"Damn! These Pirates never give up their persistence, do they?!" Samus pointed out.

"You're asking me?!" Wash yelled back as there were two more Pirates with scythes that looked quite similar to Tucker's alien-like sword, but with a blueish-like hue infused with some rare substance, coming to his direction. "And what the hell are their weapons even made of?! Geez, these guys really suck!"

"As far as I can tell, they are infused with phazon, a radioactive substance you might wanna look out for!" Shouted Samus finished off killing three Pirates at once, using their own weapons against them with her grapple lasso.

"Infused with face-on what!?"

Wash got distracted by another incoming Pirate from behind him. He just managed to dodge him and shoot him continuously as Wash got closer until he took out his knife and ended up giving him a death blow.

"Look, I'll tell you everything about it once everything is over!" Samus hollered back as she tried her best in avoiding most shots coming from all directions. Even with enough struggle, she still managed to take down one ship with a couple of scratches on her.

"Is this what you always have to face in your daily life?! A living hell with these Pirates?!" Asked Wash as many more were coming towards him, destroying the last of the crates that were blocking their path.

"You haven't seen the worst of it!" Samus shot back as a couple of more Pirates tried to take advantage of her small distractions, swinging their phazon-infused scythes to her. One of them got a hit on her, but it wasn't enough to put down the bounty hunter as she got rid of both of them with a single blow to both of their heads with missiles.

One of the Pirates going after Wash, got close enough to get a hit on his left arm. When he took the hit, it began to burn him as he felt the extreme heat that the scythe left on his armor.

"Agh! That burns like hell!" Wash groaned in pain.

"Their hits are not fatal, but they can get the best of you if your armor isn't well protected enough from this type of weaponry!" Explained Samus as she struggled slightly with the hits she's gotten herself.

As more and more were coming to their location, there were aerotroopers appearing from their sides.

"Really?! Not this again!" Complained Samus, loudly enough for Wash to even hear at a great distance.

"Not again?! Yeah, you're gonna have to tell me more than you're letting on back at our meeting on the moon about these type of monsters like them!" Said Wash as he began to have a hard time aiming at the aerotroopers above them. There have been doubts in his mind, telling him not to fully trust Samus about what she hasn't been letting on more than she already has, but right now it wasn't the time to think about doubts and trust issues.

"Remind me later then!" Samus shot back, simply trying to ignore anything that Wash might be telling her at this point in time.

With enough struggle, they managed to kill every last Pirate, along with the other two ships that were nearby. After a few moments of catching their breath, another Pirate ship showed up, one after another. It went from one... two... four... five... they began to lose count.

Samus began to groan in frustration, thinking how to even get rid of all of their ships at once, but it would be all in vain. Even if they take down at least one of their ships, they would be gone from existence, but Samus thought that even while fighting until the end, it would be worthwhile and so she began to aim her arm cannon at the first ship she saw in front of her.

Wash was in total shock. He didn't know what to do or where to start to begin with. Wash's feelings of hopelessness grew and nothing could pop up in his mind about how to deal with so many of these ships, except waves of memories coming back to him that had been burned into his mind long ago. Back in his time at Project Freelancer, he never had to fight against such amount of Insurrectionist ships or even alien-like creatures with radioactive weapons that could burn you from time to time, worse than Tucker's alien-like sword. Fighting Locus, Felix, and their useless mercenaries weren't even half as bad and he was starting to regret about joining up with Samus and her dangerous mission of eradicating such species that have almost more powerful weapons than they did.

But something unexpected happened.

There were shots being fired to at least three ships at once from behind them, immediately making them crash one after another. Then another couple of shots were fired at another group of Pirate ships, destroying nearly all of them at once. The next moment, they were met with someone gliding over a trail of ice they were making above them, just as they were about to finish up the last couple of ships that focused their sights on the unknown being. But even as they did, the ships were retreating at the same time, knowing they wouldn't be able to handle such cold-based shots on their ships that could potentially freeze and overheat their engines, until it was too late for them. They immediately got rid of the last ships standing and glided towards the pair on the dock, potentially scaring Wash for a second. The person that was helping both Samus and Wash was none, other than Rundas himself.

"Sorry I was a bit late to the party," he said as he was giving out a small stretch. "These Pirates are pretty more fragile than they appear, so don't get too weary on them."

"With enough of them surrounding you, it's pretty hard to even think about how to deal with them," said Wash, feeling so much relief that Rundas came to their rescue, moments before they were obliterated into nothing. "By the way, thank you for your help. I don't know what we would've done if..."

"Yeah, thank you," said Samus. "And that's saying something since I rarely need any outside help during these type of situations. Like Wash said, I don't know how we would've ended up if you never showed up in time."

"Hey don't sweat it," Rundas reassured them. "I was just helping out Ghor take over some of those motherships way back near the mountain range across from here, until I saw some ATC ships coming this way, along with chaotic explosives happening down here. So I figured."

"We tried contacting you or anyone who could've helped us, but the damn jammer over there has been blocking our signal," Wash pointed to where the jammer was.

"Yeah. There have been other jammers similar to that one on other parts of the base. Ghor told me that he's working on deactivating all of them as he already took over one of their motherships so it wouldn't be long that-" There was a small noise coming from the jammer itself. The only thing that meant by now, is that Ghor may have already hacked his way through and turned them off completely. "Well, there goes my last part of the sentence."

"Then it should be easier to get ahold of anyone from now on," said Samus. She then turned to Wash, "Weren't you wanting to call your girlfriend?"

"Girlfriend?" Wash didn't know what Samus was talking about initially. He came to realize that she wouldn't know anyone other than Carolina whom she would be referring to. "She's not my girlfriend. Only a really great friend of mine."

"I saw the way you eyed at her before we left," Samus teased him.

"Oh come on! She's not really-"

Then Wash came to a stop. He didn't wanna say anything more embarrassing than he's already said. He turned to Rundas as he tried changing the subject just as he felt mixed feelings about the conversation.

"So what now?"

"I just got word from the Federation that they are allowing us to use our ship-command devices. You do have one don't you, Mr. Washington?"

"Call me, Wash. I'm used to people calling me that way. And no... my ship doesn't work that way. It would require an AI to make my ship automated, in which I wouldn't look forward to at any given time anyway."

"Suit yourself," replied Rundas. He then turned to Samus "By the way Samus, don't forget to perform suit maintenance and data back up by the time you command your ship to this docking area if you need."

"You don't have to tell me twice," said Samus, slightly annoyed with hearing reminders of such a basic thing.

"Just letting you know. Also, if you guys are going to activate this generator up ahead, I'll go to the Westside and activate that one there. Between the three of us, this should be a breeze."

"Carolina should be on her way there, if not, then-"

Wash was interrupted by a radio transmission. It was coming through all of their radios at once. It sounded like a familiar voice; a voice Wash immediately came to recognize. It was none other than Carolina herself, yelling bloody murder behind the radio.

"Anyone come in! I need back up! There are some weird spider-like creatures coming at me from every direction! They seem to be infected by something radioactive! If there's anyone out there-!"

The transmission ended in mid-sentence.

Wash felt as if something hit him in the guts really hard. Spider-like creatures? What could Carolina have possibly encountered after they left her behind?

"Carolina! Come in! CAROLINA!"

 **And... yup! Cliffhanger! :) I know that nobody likes cliffhangers (including me) but for some reason, as a writer, it's quite satisfying in a way xD. This part of the story is broken up into 2 (or 3) parts so expect these parts in a span of at least a week apart. I don't feel like losing my ideas for this story again so that part of my motivation for writing this story is still going. As always, leave a _review_! It would help me a lot! Stay tuned for the next chapter, if you've made it this far with your unimaginable patience, that is.**


	9. Chapter 9: The Battle of Norion Part II

**This chapter kicks off with Carolina's point of view during the later events of the last chapter.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 9: The Battle of Norion (Part II)_

Carolina was still in shock about what she has seen a little while ago.

"How could something just disappear out of thin air?" Carolina asked herself, still wondering whether she should report it to someone or anyone on the radio. "I'm either exhausted, due to my lack of sleep recently or I'm going insane."

But she knew what she saw. Her eyes don't lie to her but could her mind be saying otherwise? Maybe. But, at any rate, she knew she must keep going.

And so she did just that.

As she headed into the bridge that connects to the Generator Access room for Generator B, she found the place deserted, much like the past area she went through. Although her suit wasn't detecting any radiation nearby, there was something that was blocking the entrance to the Generator Access area. She ended up shooting it for a full 5 seconds, enough to empty both of the loaded magazines of her dual SMGs, but nothing happened. Throwing frags weren't even giving it a single scratch or even dented it at all. She even got close towards the crystallized substance, only to be able to punch it in vain with all her might as her frustration was growing.

"Damn it!" She cursed to herself. "The others are probably done activating the first generator and I'm just here standing like an idiot and haven't even done much progress at all!"

She hoped that all of her attempts to break whatever is blocking the door to Generator B, wouldn't grab any outside attention since the raids happening around the air were not too far from her location

There was a squeaking noise underneath her feet.

She thought it was just the bridge, squeaking either out of age or due to erosion.

There was another noise. This time, it was louder and right at that moment, she knew it was not coming from the bridge she was standing on. There was a couple of creatures coming in her direction from underneath the edges of the dock. They looked like giant mutated spiders, only with four legs that looked like one scratch could likely leave you in half, even with the heaviest of armor. The creatures shrieked, calling for its horde, as they were seemingly hungry for some fresh meat that came into their habitat. More came from above the pillars and the rest came from the crystalized nest. How could their pointy legs be milestones powerful than several blasts from her own frag grenades? This speculation meant that they were potentially dangerous and the way they were hopping on all four legs, it made Carolina's skin crawl into waves of chills. It still wasn't enough to convince her to run away, not as she was close to getting one of the generators back online. Wash and Samus were counting on her and if there's something that she has promised Wash over the years, is that she will never back out on him. After trying to destroy what she didn't know was a nest before, she wasted more than half of her ammo and what little she had is what she's gonna use wisely on any of those creatures that dare to come any step closer to her. She still had her Battle Rifle with her but thought it would still not be enough to kill a whole nest of those spider-like creatures. She hoped for the best that her stun rod would be a useful last resort to kill them.

"Alright, you want me? You're gonna have to work for your food then!"

One of them jumped at her. Carolina struck with her SMGs at the right timing just before it could impale her with its front razor-looking legs and the creature shrilled in pain as it fell to the ground. She took a quick look at it but the creature had little to no scratch on its dark-blue armored-looking skin. There were two other more, hopping right behind her. Carolina had just enough time to grab out her stun rod and knock the first one down but the second one got ahold of her armor a bit heavily. She threw herself against the nearest pillar, which caused the creature to get thrown to the ground, stunning three others.

"Argh!" She grunted.

The blue creature made a fairly noticeable scratch mark on her armor, which pierced slightly through. It barely put a scratch on her hip but even at that small size, it was enough to make Carolina feel pain as she tried to move out of harm's way. Her healing unit wouldn't work properly without an AI with her, but her bio scan didn't need the assistance of such intelligence to make her find out that the pain she was getting wasn't because of the scratch itself, but because her wound had traces of the same radioactive substance she's been finding recently. However, it seemed to act like venom rather than radiation poisoning.

"What?!" She gasped. "Damn these mutants!"

Right now it wasn't the time to ponder what would be her fate after such injury. Just as more of them got closer to her, she threw in the opportunity to waste the rest of what she had on her SMGs against them. Even as she did, only a few have dropped dead. The rest of them that were still standing were only fed by more anger than what Carolina would have wanted. Their shrills of hunger, pain, and anger were getting louder and with each hop they gave were gestures showing on how much they already resented her as she has killed some of their members of the horde.

"Fine! You wanna play rough?" Carolina took out her battle rifle as her hopes of killing the rest of the hungry horde were narrowing to her only choices of using both the battle rifle and her trusty stun rod. "Have a little taste of this!"

She fired her weapon, shooting any of the four-legged hopping blue mutants who got close to her. Many dropped dead but the more she killed, the angrier the horde became, making it harder for her to keep up with them. Even as she felt the pain surge through her left hip, she didn't try to let her worsening pain get the best of her and continued to fight against the horde until she could take no more. Each step she took was another painful step she had to take as she wasn't able to resist for much longer. Most of them were still alive, shrieking at each moment that passed, making Carolina feel even more lightheaded than she already was.

As she ran for safety, the angry mutants already worked their way of blocking her only way out of the mess she was in. Even if she was able to get past them, the door's safety-lock mechanism activated and read:

*WARNING - POSSIBLE INTRUDERS - WARNING*

"Can't this get any worse?!"

She made one last desperate attempt to call for help on the radio. She didn't care if her signal wasn't going through, but if it were, she was going to make sure her last possible moments of her life would not go unnoticed.

"Anyone come in! I need back up! There are some weird spider-like creatures coming at me from every direction! They seem to be infected by something radioactive! If there's anyone who's listening to this, do not enter to my location on-ground. If you can get here by ship or by other means, you could be able to send me some backup. Again, I need BACKUP! NOW!"

Carolina's luck hasn't always been on her side, but if there was someone listening to her distress call, she hoped that they heard at least half of it. When she turned to look at the horde in front of her, one of them was turning more blue than normal, to the point where it was spitting something radioactive all around it. It aimed at a weakened Carolina, ready to throw up a giant bluish-like projectile at her.

Having no choice but to endure and survive until her last breath, she moved out of the way by crouching to her right side and as much as her wound was hurting her, as if something had punched her from the inside-out, she focused more on trying not to get irradiated by the ferocious creature hopping to her direction. As she was cornered, the creature seemed to have entered a state of beginning to fuse an unknown type of energy to its body and focused to harness the energy, in order to throw a powerful but small jet to Carolina, making it extremely difficult for her to escape with her life in the current state that she was in. As she emptied her BR ammo onto the infused creature, her bullets did almost nothing to it. As she saw the potential of these four-legged beasts, she began to lose hope. Some of the others began to do the same fusion process and focused their firepower on Carolina, who began to fear for the worst as her life was flashing before her. She wasn't able to stand anymore due to the immense pain she was having on such a small-sized scratch.

Just as a swarm of them were about to give their finishing blow, a giant metallic ball, filled with spikes, fell in between her and the angered mutants. It began to beep from a slow to a fast-paced beeping.

"Ah shit..." said Carolina as she desperately attempted to get out of its way, until it was too late.

In just a few moments, the metallic ball began to shoot massive homing spikes at the shining-blue spider mutants before everything went black. She could not hear or see no more after that, just as she fell unconscious.

* * *

Wash was starting to worry about Carolina, right after she mentioned something about radioactive creatures.

"We have to go help her!" Wash exclaimed as he was beginning to fear at the thought of Carolina being exposed to such monstrosity.

"And we will," Rundas assured him. "Her location isn't fairly far from here as she must be at the docking area that's next to Generator B. I can go directly from here to help her. Those creatures she must've encountered were probably hopping metroids."

"Hopping- what?" Wash was confused and the word "hopping" didn't help him feel any better about Carolina's situation.

"Metroids," cleared Samus. "They're dangerous species that one shouldn't be messing around with. Especially when they are infused with phazon."

"So that's what you were telling me before. Phazon, right?"

"Yes," she replied. "I suggest you take precautions before dealing with metroids infected with phazon radiation. They're extremely unpredictable and can mutate horrendously, depending on the metroid's stage in its life cycle. The ones that Carolina may have encountered are probably pre-matured metroids that have undergone extreme mutations."

All of this information was hard for Wash to digest. Too much, that he grew in frustration as to why he and Carolina weren't informed about this earlier.

"Why didn't you tell us earlier?!" Said Wash, sounding more frustrated behind his tone of voice. "If we were informed about this 'phazon' radiation, Carolina wouldn't had to send a distress call through our radios! How could you be-"

"Wash, please!" Interfered Rundas. "We can deal about it later. Right now, Carolina needs our help and I wasn't even aware that these Pirates were sending biological weapons directly to the base, until now."

"You're right," sighed Wash. He then turned to Samus. "Don't forget that you still owe me one."

"Be careful out there. Both of you," said Samus as both Wash and Rundas nodded back. "Leave this generator to me. I'll handle it myself while you two go help Carolina."

"Take care, Samus," said Rundas as he helped lift Wash to his back. Samus nodded back as she went walking on her way to the Generator Access room.

Rundas began to make his way to Carolina's location as Washington was grabbing on his back as tightly as possible. He wasn't much afraid of heights, but their trip on the way there was more than enough for him to consider heights a danger to his mental health. He felt the wind of the air around him hit him like if it was trying to push him off of Rundas' back as he was gliding onto his trail of ice.

Just as Wash couldn't keep up with Rundas' extreme mobility any longer as he felt his hands slip slightly, they have already arrived at Carolina's location. What they saw from above was a whole mess. There were a lot of carcasses that were littering the ground deck, especially near the main entrance from where the conduit of the area should be. Across from the Conduit B entrance, there was a massive robotic machinery across from there and two other figures near the conduit entrance.

"Ghor," Rundas said, as he recognized the giant armor suit or what would also be his gunship. "I knew I could count on him."

"There's Carolina! Quickly drop us there!" Ordered Wash, not even caring whether there were any hopping metroids that were still left alive.

"Hold on!" Replied Rundas, making their way between Ghor and a weak Carolina.

Just as Rundas was about to land the on the ground, Wash did not want to wait any longer and quickly jumped out of his back, making his way towards Carolina.

"No... Carolina!?" He yelled in a desperate attempt to see if she was alive at all. "Please! You're the only soldier I know who is strong enough to survive anything!"

"She's not stable and we need to get her to the medical facility if you want your friend to survive," explained Ghor to a whimpering Wash. "I tried my best to get here on time when I heard and saw from above on what she was going through. Luckily enough, there weren't any Pirate ATC ships flying around to finish what these freaks started."

"Wait..." Said Wash just as something popped into his mind. "Carolina's healing unit!"

Wash quickly grabbed her healing unit and threw it over her, but it wasn't doing much. Whatever Carolina was suffering from, it wasn't going away even after a few minutes of waiting.

"Damn it!" Cursed Wash as he stood up, growing more in frustration and despair. "Why now of all time!? Why isn't there a goddamn AI this time around when we need this at full power?! Why, Church?! Why?!"

Rundas didn't know what to tell him, other than to keep going as there wasn't much time before the Pirates figure out they have destroyed one of their hives for the biological weapons they threw in at the base.

"Wash... we... we have to get moving before-"

Wash quickly lashed out at him, while immediately putting him at gunpoint.

"NO! IF IT WASN'T FOR THE FEDERATION, WHO DRAGGED US INTO THIS MESS, NONE OF THIS WOULD'VE EVER HAPPENED!"

"Wash, there's no need to do this," Said Rundas with his calm demeanor while also putting himself on his knees. "Look, I know you're angry. I would be too. Heck, I would probably go on a rampage against the Federation if something were to happen to Samus because of them, but us bounty hunters aren't really affiliated with the Federation. Bad things just happen to the best of us. Is this also the way you want things to go after the loss of a friend? Revenge for something you will never be able to get back?"

"You know NOTHING about loss!" Wash shot back, while also readying his finger on the trigger. "You have no IDEA how much I have lost, taken advantage of, been stabbed in the back, getting tortured from your DEEPEST FEARS that are forever BURNED into your mind. All of that AND FOR WHAT!? JUST TO GET SCREWED OVER BY YOUR GODDAMN FRIENDS WITH LIMITED KNOWLEDGE FROM WHAT WE WERE GOING TO BE DEALING WITH!"

"You're right..." Said Rundas, sympathetically. "I may not know much about loss since I lost my parents and sister right after I was born. I never knew much about them even after I grew up, but my older brother would always tell me stories about how much our mother and father deeply cared about our well-being and how loving they were towards him and my sister. In their last moments in which they had me in their arms after I was born, a group of Pirates raided the facility and killed most of the workers there, including my parents and older sister, who died protecting me in her arms. That's why after everything my brother has told me about them, I ended up becoming a hunter; someone who could make use of ice manipulation to make a difference in our world, our galaxy."

There was a moment of silence. Wash was still aiming his gun at Rundas' head, only slightly lowering his weapon, wondering whether shooting him will make him feel any better or worse.

Then, there was the sound of someone coughing. Carolina began to regain consciousness.

"Wash..." she mumbled slightly. "What... what are you doing?"

Wash then came to Carolina, seemingly ignoring what just happened moments ago.

"Hey, Carolina. How are you doing?"

"I've been better..." she replied. Although she was still feeling a small headache, she no longer felt any extreme pain like before. "What happened?"

"I used some of my biotic energy to fully energize your healing unit while these two were having some slight issues with one another," Ghor explained, almost getting Wash off-guard as he nearly forgot that he was even here. "Since my body is almost completely machine, I was able to transfer some of my biotic energy to your armor. I'm not an AI, or at least not yet, but the process should help you feel better over time. You're healing unit won't last you for more than several minutes at max power, but it should be enough time for you to make a full recovery."

Trust issues were one of Wash's main problems since the day his friends and teammates from Project Freelancer started backstabbing one another. At this point, he was starting to think that trusting these hunters shouldn't be much of an issue anymore. Although he didn't know what to think of the pink transparent-like woman. If she's trusted by the other hunters, then she wouldn't be a problem.

"Thank you for saving her life," said Wash, feeling ashamed of himself for blaming Rundas and the other hunters when all they've been doing was saving their lives since they first met.

"No need to thank me. It's in my nature to save lives since the day I joined the military for the first time," Ghor checked on Carolina's vitals and saw drastic improvements within her system, healing her wounds completely. "She should be good to go, although I would recommend that she should just stay put for a few minutes in order to make sure that the venom is completely gone."

"No!" Said Carolina, struggling to stand up as she felt like her legs were trying to give up on her for a moment. "I can still fight."

"You never change do you?" Wash pointed out, chuckling a bit.

"Since when have I ever?" She shot back, feeling better standing now.

" Yeah you're right," replied Wash. "But ever since the day you decided to join Tucker's musical sessions and the day you wanted to learn how to become as lazy as Grif, you have changed quite a lot."

"Yeah, right..." answered Carolina. "But don't tell me you never changed too because last time I checked, you wanted to play tag with Caboose and you even asked for Tucker to help you flirt with me. I gotta say, it was so hilarious to watch you two practice doing so all along."

"Wait, what!? You were watching all along? I knew it sounded fishy when you told me that you wanted to take a nap because you rarely ever do!"

"And I tried! It was part of Grif's advice but it just doesn't feel right for me to take naps throughout the whole day. I don't know how Grif does it anyway. Just after trying to take a nap, you and Tucker caught my attention when you both were at the roof, rehearsing everything so loudly,"

"Enough!" Ghor ordered as he was already merged with his suit, which has altered his persona with a more aggressive tone and colder emotion. "We need to get going. These Pirates are more relentless than you think! I'll go do whatever I can around here, while one of you should move onwards and activate the generator here. Now, get moving!" Ghor immediately went busting away as his jets propelled him away towards a group of various ATC ships in the distance.

"So... Wash," said Rundas as he approached him with his hand towards him. "Are we in good terms?"

Wash hesitated for a moment, but then remembered that all they are trying to do is the same thing as he and Carolina came here to do. He even owes him for saving his life, at least twice. He then took his hand and did a firm handshake with him and then bent their arms close together in a fist.

"We're good," Wash replied. "Plus, I owe you double."

"You'll get the time to do the same for me sometime soon enough. I'm sure of it," said Rundas.

"Care to bring me with you?" Asked Carolina.

"How are you feeling?" Replied Wash.

"Like a phoenix born from the ashes."

"Then let's get going."

* * *

Samus was having a bad feeling that activating the generator of the area wouldn't be a cakewalk. Not like anything in her life was easy enough, but she hoped for the best, trying to get her pessimistic thoughts out of the way.

Just as she entered the generator room, everything started shaking. There was a pillar in the center that lit up the room as it was moving upwards. It seemed like the generator room detected Samus' presence and automatically opened the manual override activation process so she could manually activate the generator's power using the control panel that was right across from her. There was nothing that seemed dangerous; no Pirates, no drones, no hives, no nothing. Samus was still on her guard as anything could pop out of nowhere, so she went onwards, carefully looking at her surroundings with her scan visor telling her everything about the place.

There was a noise coming at a distance from beneath the depthless ground around her.

Samus didn't know if there really was something spying on her or anything that she's been hearing through the silence of the room is all just happening inside her mind. Then, a female voice in the background was heard, breaking the air of silence completely.

" _Warning. A security breach has been detected. Repeat. A security breach has been detected. Lockdown Initiated._ "

"What the?" Samus gasped as she inspected her surroundings.

Two drones rose up from beneath the ground. They were Pirate drones, designed to kill any intruder in a specified area by firing bursts of phazon energy.

"I knew these jerks weren't the type of leaving anything exposed for an easier route."

Samus quickly put the two drones out of their misery, merely missing their shots at Samus. Just as Samus' pessimism was getting to her, more came from underground. There were now at least four more to take care of but this time, they were more agile, as if they had taken combat data from their companions right before they got destroyed. The room was being littered with phazon and beam shots almost everywhere in the whole area. Just when Samus got rid of three of them, the last one gave Samus a direct blow at her that burned some of her armor, enough to make Samus grunt in pain. Luckily, her own suit has the ability to regenerate damaged parts, only whenever she had enough fuel in her energy tanks to do so. Just as she had enough with drones for the day, she took the time to predict the last drone's moves before quickly dispatching it with a charged shot, making it drop dead soon after.

"These drones are fast, but they're not as smart," said Samus as she heard the only door through where she came from, unlocking.

* * *

"These Pirates should probably pick someone their own size if they can't even handle a woman like me,"

Gandrayda was being boastful like always, but it's not like that ever stopped her from doing what she knows what needs to be done first. She has spent this past hour fighting Space Pirates ever since she arrived at Norion. Helping the Federation Marines and dealing with groups of Space Pirates in the interiors of the base wasn't much of a problem for her, as long as her mission stayed as simple as it could until she got a call from Admiral Dane himself.

"Gandrayda, do you read me?"

"Yes, I read you loud and clear, sir" Gandrayda responded with full of confidence behind her voice.

"I need you, specifically, to look up for more information about the Space Pirates' intentions of interfering with Federation operations in this specific part of the region. You're the only one that qualifies for this job perfectly, due to your abilities."

"Yes sir, but you do realize Samus would also qualify for this type of situation, right?" Replied Gandrayda, trying not to think that Samus could best her in that particular field.

"I am aware of that, but seeing that everyone has been busy trying to get every generator back online and knowing that you have been helping the other marines quite well, it should be easy enough for you to pose as one of the Pirates now that they have a mothership landing just around near your location. Get inside that ship somehow and grab any type of information that could be of use to us. Time is at its best hurry so you should do the same."

"Copy. I'll see what I can do."

And just like that, her mission has become from being simple to a more annoying one. She never liked infiltrating any type of place, while having to hide under the body of a pesky Space Pirate. It's just not in her style, or to anyone who had her mimicry abilities with Space Pirate hatred for that matter.

As Gandrayda finished tending to a fellow marine soldier, she went on her way to the top floors of the Federation base. From there, she used her jumping mimicry of Samus' jump boots and ran right into the rooftops of the base.

"There it is," she said as she was crouching behind some cargo crates to hide from the Pirates that were signaling the incoming mothership. "Now the only way to get there is to try to blend in."

She wasn't relishing the idea of transforming into a Space Pirate and try to be the only anti-social one when almost every other Pirate could turn against her at any moment. As much as she didn't like to admit it, there would be too many even for her to handle on her own.

"Well, here goes nothing," Gandrayda told to herself as she transformed into a regular armored Space Pirate. "Yuck! I rather hang around with my ex-boyfriend than doing this any day. Oh well..."

Walking through a group of Space Pirates while others were staring at your every move wasn't a good feeling for Gandrayda at all, but all she was trying to focus her mind on was to keep moving forward and get on the mothership, while most weren't paying much attention to her at all until one tall, blue-armored Pirate noticed something funny about her.

"Hey, hey!" He called out for Gandrayda's attention as she stood still, trying not to blow her cover. "Where have you been? Trying to reach you was a pain and you are just calmly wandering about."

Gandrayda didn't know what to reply back to him, but improvisation was something that she needed to do at that moment, in which she was quite good at doing.

"Can't you see I was busy?!" She emphasized, trying to sound confident and threatening at the other Pirate, just like most do to each other. "Having to deal with the Federation wasn't an easy task at hand now, is it? Now if you'll get out of my way, it would be a perfect start for you letting me do my job!" She ended up giving him a dead stare at him, to the point of even frightening herself a bit from the inside.

The Pirate was seemingly feeling uncomfortable with Gandrayda's Pirate stare and ultimately decided to turn away, letting Gandrayda do her own business without any sort of suspicion.

Just as she was done dealing with the blue-armored Pirate, she continued on to the mothership, not having to deal with any more Space Pirate intrusion. The Space Pirates that were hanging about were all just trying to grab their new weaponry that came from the shipment of cargo crates from inside the mothership.

As she headed in there from crate to crate and through the ventilation shafts, she managed to breach into a room seemed to be like a dormitory of some kind. It was pretty big for one Space Pirate, but then again, every Pirate out there would be greedy enough to get anything they could. The room was mostly empty with one bed at the corner of the room, big enough for one Pirate and at least three human-sized beings. A computer device was just across the bed, with a desk and a big comfy chair.

Hesitant, due to her dislikeness with any type of machine, she headed to the computer and tried to see if there was anything she could do. To her surprise, she didn't even need to hack her way into the computer as it was still signed in as a certain Space Pirate called, Orion.

"Really?" Gandrayda marveled. "No. It can't be THAT easy to get access to this type of information. This Pirate must've been here not too long ago."

Inside his list of logs, there were all about from their initial rise in Zebes to one of their latest downfall in Aether. To her frustration, there was nothing else to find what she was looking for, regarding their recent attacks in the Kalandor Region, containing anything about Norion, Bryyo, and Elysia. Gandrayda returned to her original form in order to scan everything faster with her normal gear that she's originally been wearing.

A minute later, she paused for a moment. There was one, in particular, that got her attention. It was dated just recently and talked about Orion, rebelling against his other comrades for their own actions.

 _Log 12.162.1_

 _Codename: Orion_

 _My brethren... how could they possibly be foolish enough to think that the **Dark Hunter** will help us in any way? We couldn't even convince **The Hunter** to join our ranks. Haven't they realized that the **Dark Hunter** was the cause of our depletion in phazon resources? She has stolen almost everything from us, even the minds of our most beloved fallen comrades. We were the cause of her creation; an abomination that still roams around even after her multiple defeats against **The Hunter** in Dark Aether and Tallon IV as its true form; a severely mutated metroid who, soon enough, reincarnated as the enemy of our enemy._

 _It's already too late to be able to redeem ourselves with the damage that we have done. Our ancestors would not be any more disappointed than they could possibly be if they were to still be alive and leading our ranks. Even our **former** **leader** has fallen to this illness of the dark corruption. We should not have played around with phazon around the remains of the **Dark Hunter**. _

_As much as I'd love to see the Federation fall, the **Dark Hunter** is the main priority as she would not rest until she has full control of our species, or at the very least, kill those who defy her and her filthy disciples. There's not much time before she ends up corrupting everything that I've ever come to known, including the minds of my own enemies. No one shall have to suffer a fate worse than death when it comes to such dark corruption._

 _Even it means working alongside **The Hunter** in order to see the **Dark Hunter's** defeat, I will do it, even if it'll cost my life to gain **The Hunter's** trust. I can't bear to see my former comrades turn against me any longer, but I have no other choice._

 _May the light of our ancestors lead my way to redemption..._

 _End of Log_

Gandrayda didn't know what she was looking at. According to this Pirate, he's mentioned that the "Dark Hunter" was still alive and leading their ranks to a path of corruption. No wonder why they were trying to land an attack on Norion, but does this also mean that they're going to be spreading Phazon all over these space regions?

"But how are they going to do that?" Gandrayda asked to herself. "Giant nuclear devices? Kamikaze motherships with missiles filled with phazon?"

One other thing that really made her thinking, was that even though she knew that all those Space Pirates she has ever come to known were all ruthless without mercy even to their own kind, this one seemed to have other goals. They seemed to be more human than she ever was herself. At least now she knew for a fact that not every Space Pirate was too keen on having phazon being spread for corruption throughout entire space regions.

Just as Gandrayda gazing at the computer, without warning, a Space Pirate entered the room through the only door in the dormitory. Gandrayda was just about to grab a stolen Galactic Federation machine pistol nearby, only for it to be knocked down by the Pirate himself with a deadly accurate shot with his plasma pistol.

"Don't you dare to think about doing anything clever!" The Pirate growled, furiously.

 **Well, that is it for this chapter.**

 **Thank you for your patience! Again, I apologize for the big gap in the uploading process. I've been having so much stuff to do recently and my time schedule isn't at all nice. I've only been having time to write down this story at least once or twice a week, which is the main reason why I've been taking so long to upload anything for this story. At this rate, I'll probably only be able to upload one or two chapters per month, but I can't make any promises.**

 **Again, thank you for patience! Your feedback is also greatly appreciated! I'll also gladly take any criticism without question so I'll be able to know more on where to improve. :D I hope you guys have an awesome day!**


	10. Chapter 10 The Battle of Norion Part III

**This chapter starts off with Samus' point of view.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 10: The Battle of Norion Part III_

Samus was still standing on her guard, even after taking out the drones as anything could still try to catch her off-guard. As she reached for the control panel and broke through the debris that was caused by external damage around the area, she proceeded to turn on the main power. A few moments later, the pillar at the center finished connecting to the lower portion of the ground and proceeded to ask Samus for authorization at the front door of the only exit out of there. She then proceeded with the authorization and Generator A was finally activated.

"Finally!" Exclaimed Samus as she felt a bit more of a relief that one problem was already out of the way.

Just as she was about to let her teammates know about the reactivation of Generator A, there was a call coming from the Admiral himself.

"Is anyone able to read me? Over."

"This is Samus Aran, what's up?" Samus replied.

"Something big is happening up here and I don't think there should be any normal turbulence around here in space when there's nothing that's attacking the Olympus at the mo—" There was a small pause, before Admiral Dane saw something huge, coming through what seemed to be a wormhole. "What in the name of...?"

"Admiral? Admiral!" Samus tried to get his attention, having a growing urge to know what is going on.

"Take a look at this!" The Admiral quickly connected his live footage of the Olympus' windows to Samus' visor.

What Samus saw made her eyes open wide in terror. There was a giant meteor that seemed to be headed straight to Norion, about a few kilometers in diameter. She immediately knew that the intention of the Pirates all along was to turn Norion into nothing more than a wasteland, similar to the wastelands she's seen back in Tallon IV and Aether.

"No... this... this can't be!" Samus gasped. "How— How did that thing manage to travel through a wormhole?"

"I am as clueless as you are. This is probably the reason why these Space Pirates wanted the defense system offline in order to smash this thing into Norion, but how is it possible that they managed to build a wormhole when that is even out of their stolen advanced-tech paygrade? At any rate, get that cannon back online or everyone down there is as good as dead!"

As the transmission ended, Samus was left in distraught about how could the Space Pirates have control over such thing like a giant meteor, especially one that came through a wormhole. There was nothing she could do to find answers but one thing she knew for sure is that she needed to move onwards and help get that cannon back online as soon as possible.

Samus' mind was filled with voices telling her to hurry up and get a move on for each step that she took. Adam Malkovich, Old Bird, and Gray Voice were among them. They were all in her mind telling her to move more quickly than ever.

"Any objections, lady?"

That's the final phrase she would hear at the end of every command inside her mind. Adam always wanted to denote trust at all times by using this phrase, yet it was also a form of joking with her in some way, much to her confusion in many cases.

The moment she stepped outside in the docking area was the moment she found out how much chaos was happening after her departure to the generator she has just activated. The Federation marines have been trying to delay an assault to the generator access room.

Much to her horror, the few Pirates that were left alive have already obliterated all, but one Federation marine. The marine didn't seem too beat down but rather feeling more anger than anything. There was a glowing blueish-like backpack that he was carrying, which grabbed Samus' full attention. He charged up his weapons as he infused them with phazon energy and immediately threw bursts of phazon-charged shots at the three pirates, killing them instantly. He powered down his backpack and turned to Samus as he turned on his radio to call in the Federation.

"All clear," he emphasized with a serious tone.

Samus moved up towards the marine and tried to see if he was doing any better after the spread of phazon energy through his armor. She knew about the special kind of phazon backpacks only exclusively used by marines or soldiers, equipped with PED suits and only those who were highly trained to use such equipment. What Samus didn't know, was that if they ever make the user feeling sick after extensive usage on the PED suits.

"Hey, how are you doing with that thing?" She asked.

"Fine, actually. Haven't had any trouble with it since I was first given the PED suit some weeks back," the marine replied.

"Has anyone fallen ill with phazon sickness because of it?"

"No," the marine replied discreetly. "There haven't been any such reports since the invention of the PED suit. Anyway, you should probably get going. I got this area covered for you, in case anything goes wrong. At least until the invasion is over or get new direct orders from the Admiral."

"Alright. I'll be on my way. Take care!" Samus said, trying to hope for the best on the lone wolf.

Right as she turned around the corner, she got a glimpse of what would look like a giant vulture or dragon at a distance. At that instant, she knew exactly what it was.

"Ridley..."

She groaned in frustration by the fact that he didn't know when to give up.

"I'll make sure you stay in your rightful place this time!"

As she made her way through the conduit room that was already giving off electric discharges, there were more Pirates waiting for her inside but were all interrupted by one single PED marine. The marine managed to quickly dispatch every Pirate on his own, without needing Samus' help or anyone else for that matter.

"Wonder if us, bounty hunters, can get our hands with those suits someday," Samus said to herself.

She always thought that it was impossible for an average Federation marine to take out multiple Pirates on their own when surrounded, but it seems like the PED suits are making everything worthwhile.

"All clear here!" The marine in front of her said excitedly as though he had won the lottery recently.

Samus nodded at him, trying to let him know that she complied with what he said. As she pressed onwards, there were small crawlmines that both Wash and Carolina had to deal with back in Olympus. They started swarming in front of her, trying to block her way through. They weren't dangerous alone, but they could surely damage or even kill anyone if they end up within the vicinity of a big group of swarming crawlmines.

"Get out of my way!"

* * *

 _A little earlier..._

The giant hive that was blocking the entrance through the access area to Generator B was blown up to pieces as its inhabitants were all gone for good, letting Wash, Carolina, and Rundas go through.

The trio then ventured forward, until they entered the room for Generator B.

"What the hell happened to this place?" Wash gasped, looking at the small but big horrors around the entire room of Gen B that was covered in small hives of crystallized and liquified phazon.

"The hopping metroids were busy making a home out of this place, but it seems like most of these hives are just destroyed empty shells," replied Rundas.

"The word 'most' wouldn't necessarily make anyone feel better about this place," said Carolina, nervously. "Just look at the amount of phazon that's covering the whole place near the energy cell at our twelve. How the hell are we suppose to go through without getting ourselves killed with the radioactive crap in the way?"

"Let me go take a closer look. You guys should guard the area here, in case anything wrong happens," said Rundas, walking through what seemed to be phazon that has been already hardened, rendering it somewhat harmless to anyone who passes by.

Each step that Rundas took made him nervous from the inside, even though he wasn't for one to show his emotional vulnerabilities when it comes to situations like this. The last step he took was the moment he realized that there was something inside, hiding beneath the pools of phazon in front of him. The only problem was that there was nothing hiding in beneath the pools of phazon, but the pools themselves were brought to life and gained a mind of their own.

"How the hell?" Rundas gasped, not haven't seen anything like it. "Hey! We got a situation here!"

The freelancers took a look at Rundas in the distance and saw what was ahead of them.

"What the-?!" Carolina gasped.

"How is that even physically possible?!" Exclaimed Wash immediately after.

"Whatever they are, just shoot those things!" Ordered Rundas as he tried throwing gases of ice to them, but to no avail. It seemed like they were immune to ice, at least in their liquid form.

The freelancers got closer with Rundas to help him out by shooting the pools of phazon floating around the grounds and walls as they spread for self-defense. In retaliation towards the trio, they began exposing their young to defend them in battle, as they were their main line of defense by making them shoot bursts of phazon energy towards them. For some time, they were able to learn their movements and patterns, quickly dispatching them off by shooting the phazon grubs as soon as they were exposed. One problem they had was that the more they killed, the more they spawned from the remnants of the empty phazon shells from the hopping metroids.

"There's just too many of them!" Shouted Carolina, trying not to do the same mistake she did when fighting the horde of creatures that attacked her just outside from where they were.

"Keep shooting and focus on them one by one! The things that appear from the inside are their weak spots. You kill those, you kill them!" Instructed Rundas as he kept shooting ice crystals at the phazon grubs that appeared inside the semi-sentient pools of phazon.

"Yeah, thanks for the info Mr. Captain Ice-King Obvious!" Carolina shot back.

"You know he's right!" Stated Wash as he merely dodged a phazon blast thrown at him. "You look like you're trying too hard not to get hit by these things and I get it, considering how you were close to death's door not too long ago, but all you gotta do is listen to his 'focus on one by one' instruction."

"I know!" Carolina felt overwhelmed, but one thing for sure was that she did need to focus one at a time, which is something that she initially tried to do before, but went berserk when there were too many to count back when she fought the mutated metroids.

"I just... have to focus..." she said to herself.

Just then, she followed exactly what Rundas and Wash told her to do. Shooting them with her battle rifle onto the grubs one at a time was working out. The ones that got too close to her in order to infect her with phazon, were exterminated first, then the ones that were further away, shooting multiple blasts of phazon at the trio.

Wash had little to no issues dealing with the semi-sentient beings himself and was more focused on trying to keep an eye out on Carolina, just to make sure she wouldn't do anything dumb. Rundas, on the other hand, was more occupied in keeping Wash out of harm's way since he too, wasn't paying much attention to his surroundings as he insisted on keeping an eye out on Carolina. He didn't mind protecting the pair as he felt like it was his job to protect anyone who he was going to be working with. Plus, he felt pity for Wash from having to have suffered enough loss, according to what he has said about himself in the past.

In the middle of the whole fight against the pools of phazon, their radios were receiving a transmission from the Admiral. Samus was heard in the background replying back and soon found out that there was a giant meteor heading directly to Norion, confirming an imminent impact within a limited time-frame.

"What?!" Gasped Wash. "First, we had to save a world from regular human Space Pirates from taking it over, now this?! I don't even know which days are the worst days of my life at this point!"

After the last grub was gotten rid of, they finally had some peace and quiet to give themselves a small rest as Rundas went ahead to put back the energy cell into its place, turning on the main power, and authorizing the reactivation of Generator B.

"So a meteor that came out of nowhere and is headed directly towards this planet? Well isn't that just the best news I've ever heard in a long time?" Carolina pointed out the obvious.

Rundas was feeling uneasy as he gazed upon the air, thinking about the possibility of the meteor being something more than just your ordinary space rocks floating around.

"If it is what I think it is, we have to help get the other last generator back online ASAP or else..."

"What is it exactly that you think it is, besides a meteor?" Questioned Wash, confused as to what Rundas is really thinking about.

"It may not be just any ordinary meteor that the Pirates intend to destroy Norion with. Why would it just come out of nowhere through a wormhole when they could've used conventional means of redirecting a space rock nearby towards the planet when there are thousands, if not, millions of them orbiting nearby? I'm sure the thing that's going to hit the planet soon enough is something far more dangerous than we think."

"Like what?!"

"I got no clue, but let's keep moving before things get a lot worse."

Just as the trio took a step outside of the generator access area, they were met with an army of Space Pirates that were waiting for them, but they weren't your ordinary Pirates, however. These ones had glowing blue eyes and armors that were glowing with blue auras. They were armed with plasma pistols that were seemingly charged with phazon and most of them seemed bulkier than others. The trio prepared themselves, not trying to underestimate what these type of phazon-infected Pirates were capable of doing.

"I think we may have over-stayed our welcome for far too long..."

* * *

 _Sometime earlier..._

For the smallest moment that Gandrayda had to take a closer look at the Pirate, it didn't look like he was just a regular Pirate like the others, especially with the yellowish-type of armor that rarely any Pirate even wears. He seemed big and built for a Pirate, but he didn't have the blue eyes that Gandrayda had seen on most of them that have been raiding the planet for these past hours.

"Sorry, but you're not my-"

The Pirate shot again with his plasma weapon, but this time, missing a few inches away from her right ear.

"Next shot will be straight in between your eyes if you don't do as I say and tell me what have you been doing here, Gandrayda!" Commanded the Pirate with a more furious tone.

The Pirate knew her name, much to Gandrayda's surprise, but she knew how to control and hide her emotions and reactions in situations like this where another would try to read her body language or facial expressions to purge out the truth that she might be hiding.

"Hmph... Well played," she replied with a smile. "Since you already know my name, let me try to guess yours; the name's Orion, right?"

"That's none of your business!" The Pirate growled in frustration. "I know you've been working for the Federation! You're one of those bounty hunters sent by them! I have done enough research of my own to be able to know each and every one of you. Now, if you want to keep your miserable life, give me a perfect reason. Otherwise, I'll be forced to serve your head to my superiors!"

"What superiors?" She inquired, knowing that he's lying about having any, considering he's now a freelance Pirate. "You have the 'Dark Hunter' or should I say, the dark clone of 'The Hunter', leading your ranks alongside your former leader, which I believe would be Ridley, right?"

The Pirate had a blank expression on his face.

"Yes, I came by to look for more information about what's been happening around this region, until I stumbled upon a particular file, containing some information about you going on a rampage against your own kind," Gandrayda took a closer look at the Pirate, in which he seemed like he was hesitating whether to put her out of her misery or not. "And if you were any of those merciless Pirates I've come to known, you would have already pulled the trigger on me when you had the chance or at least tried taking me into custody for your own dirty little biological experiments."

Orion was staring at her with an angry look, yet he had a growing expression of uneasiness.

"Listen," he replied with a deep lizard-like voice and a threatening tone. "How about this; walk away like this never happened, or as I said before, I'll end you right here, right now."

Gandrayda wanted to get this over with and just finish him off as she has done with any other Pirate, but what if what she's seen about him was true? What if they could work together and prevent this whole attack from getting worse than it already is? She didn't relish the idea about working with a Pirate, but if there's a chance to save Norion with his help, she's gonna have to take that chance. The more help, the better. If he starts to get restless, she would have no problem taking him out. If Samus would be able to do it, so could she. Either way, she could just use him and then get rid of him for good after they're done fighting off the invasion.

The alarms of the whole Pirate ship went off and the room was filled with red lighting from all over directions. Gandrayda didn't have the slightest idea of what was going on; whether she was caught in the ship, the ship getting raided by one of her teammates, or something else entirely. Her radio soon came back to life.

"Is anyone able to read me? Over."

It was Admiral Dane. He sounded desperate for anyone to answer him, but Orion still had his aim on Gandrayda and gave her a warning sign that if she were to answer the radio at any moment, he would immediately kill her. Gandrayda knew that he wasn't going to kill her, but in order to let him know that they were on the same side, she would have to heed to his warning and not answer her radio at all.

Samus was heard replying to the Admiral in the background and was informed about a giant meteor that came out of nowhere from space and was heading directly towards Norion. As they heard the transmission end, Gandrayda finally understood what Orion meant in his journal by The Dark Hunter spreading corruption to wherever she went. She was most likely already here and sent this meteor that's probably filled with phazon to destroy anything in her way. Gandrayda had so much valuable information at hand that she wanted to give out on the radio, but couldn't.

She walked closer to Orion, one step at a time, trying to convince him that they could work together; something that he implied to do so, according to what he has written on his personal journal.

"You said in that journal that you wanted to redeem yourself to your ancestors, right? You want to make amends for what your kind has done through the blind power of that evil entity your species are worshipping?"

Orion was on the verge of pulling the trigger for each step that she took, but couldn't bring himself to do it when his opportunities were flying towards his face.

Gandrayda continued. "Don't you know that the galaxy or even the universe as we know it, can fall under the hands of such corruption that no one, including your kind, could ever take control over anything anymore? Is that the kind of power you want; the kind of place you want to live without having any kind of free will? It's not gonna be just your enemies that will fall under this category, but you and your own Pirate species as well," She stood right in front of his plasma gun, putting herself in a position where he could easily shoot her in the head. "Make your choice."

There was a long pause. The alarm was the only thing that was blaring in between them as Orion was having random thoughts all over his mind; whether to kill her now and not blow his cover as a traitor or team up with his old enemies and worry about the bigger threat that can obliterate everything as they know it. Killing Gandrayda would surely make him feel better, but in order to fulfill his own objectives, he's gonna need some outside help and killing her would destroy any opportunity of gaining any sort of trust from the Federation or even The Hunter herself.

He lowered his gun.

"Good choice," Gandrayda stated, feeling a bit of a relief herself that she managed to convince a Pirate to be on her side on a life or death situation.

"This does not mean that we will work together after this whole mess. Once we are finished, dealing with you and the others will be my next priority," Orion put his plasma gun away with a menacing look on his face.

"I guess we have something in common now," said Gandrayda as she gave a small wink to the Pirate before turning away towards the only window in the room. She sighed, "So... what do we do now? I'm sure the rest of your ugly friends will eventually know what you're up to. That's if they still do not know what you're actually up against. The Federation and my other teammates will surely despise the idea of working alongside a Pirate like you so that officially makes us partners in crime, right? Not to mention we are probably gonna pull guns on each other after everything is over."

"Don't get too comfortable," Orion stated with his lizard-like deep voice, giving Gandrayda a dead stare after she turned around to face him.

"And you think I'm comfortable enough to work with you?" She inquired. "I had to think twice after reading everything you had on that terminal. I don't like the idea either, but we've got no other choice now."

"Maybe you shouldn't have stuck your nose where you shouldn't have," Orion shot back, having a furious look on his face. At the same time, he felt like it was somehow, necessary for someone like her to read his personal notes about what his objectives were.

"That's how I get paid the big bucks; sneaking around and infiltrating areas where I shouldn't be," Gandrayda gave a small smirk. "By the way, about that meteor, how the heck was Dark Samus able to send it through a wormhole?"

"No clue here," he replied. "Not one uninfected Pirated knows about this type of technology. Only those who serve under the leadership of The Dark Hunter would know and they wouldn't give out any information to any of us unless we accepted them and transform into phazon beings like her."

He frowned and started to look depressed.

"Most of our kind around this region have fallen under her corruption and we all have lost contact from the outside colonies. Some of us have gone here undercover, while others have directly accepted their doings, but never took the corruption into their bodies."

Gandrayda didn't know what to feel; whether to feel happy, sympathetic or anything else entirely. For one side, she felt like the Pirates deserve what's happening to them, but for the other, she couldn't bear the idea to put herself in his position and know what it feels like to have lost almost everything around you under the hands of such corruption.

"We should probably head back outside and if your goal is to get rid of the dark corruption that your kind is trying to spread, then help us out by activating one of those generators below. I'll just try to talk my way through everyone else once they see you and me working together," Gandrayda couldn't believe she was saying this over the protection of a Space Pirate. She thought it was only a matter of time before she became completely out of her mind.

"Then let's stop wasting time. Let me do the talking with the Pirates, while you do your part with the humans and other bounty hunters working alongside with you."

"Yeah, whatever. Let's just get this over with, shall we?"

* * *

 _Meanwhile..._

"Two down, one more to go!"

Samus kept on telling herself the same phrase repeatedly. All they needed to do now was to activate Generator C, get the cannon defense system going, and deal with whatever is left of the invasion before getting another mission update. Not that Samus was annoyed, except for the fact that Ridley was still alive after his last downfall back at Tallon IV, but it would be naive of her to think that Ridley will ever give up, no matter how many times she will have to keep dealing with him.

After heading back to where they all came from since they first started going their separate ways, the gateway to Generator C was still locked and secure, until a giant explosion crumbled it into pieces as two giant creatures were fighting to their death. Only one managed to survive as the Berserker Knight was stabbed in the chest and finally taking a blow towards the head while the giant machine remained victorious.

The giant machine was none other than Ghor himself.

As he emerged out of his suit, he began to do some quick maintenance work on it before letting Samus know that he has taken care of the other Berserker Knights that have been deployed by the Space Pirates themselves.

"Go on ahead, Samus. I'll stay here and protect the gate to the elevator," he reassured her as he finished up fixing his suit quickly. "The others should probably be on their way here. I'll let them know you'll be getting this one yourself and the more people I get here, the better chances we have at putting up a defensive position against these invading critters."

"Alright," Samus complied. "I'll see you soon."

Ghor then immediately got on his suit, dramatically changing from a light-hearted tone to a more dark and serious one.

"Proceed quickly and hurry back here before we ARE ALL VAPORIZED!"

Samus knew that his suit made him more like a completely different person, but deep down, she knew that Ghor really cares for his team, regardless of having his personality altered by his suit or not. She ventured forward without looking back.

Throughout her journey towards Generator C, more Space Pirates, both infected and uninfected by phazon, kept trying to push her back while Marines came to her aid in order to distract them from keeping Samus at bay. Crawlmines were becoming a nuisance and debris that came falling down on every corner of the facility, due to the vast explosions in the outer locations of the area, were sometimes either a big help or the complete opposite.

Once she arrived at Cargo Dock C, there was nothing but pipes hanging around the place. Samus had no other choice but to continue her journey via morph ball mode. Even though she was quite good at infiltrating areas in small spaces, she didn't always feel too comfortable in doing so, especially when she would become most vulnerable towards even the smallest attacks from small predators. Inside her morph ball, she was able to rotate her view wherever she liked and stayed in the same position so that it wouldn't make her motion sick while moving around.

After a brief moment of traveling through the pipes, there was a roar in the background and immediately slammed through the pipes, trying to get a grip on her, but easily managed to evade its claws until it finally gave up and went away. Once she went to the other side of the dock area, she stood out of her morph ball and took a glance at what it actually was. It was none other than Ridley himself, who tried getting rid of Samus in order to prevent her from getting closer to the generator.

"Wonder what are you up to now?" Samus told herself. "You better hope you don't get to come back here and face me again in my normal form."

As Samus reached Generator C, she found herself in an ambush from Space Pirates, expecting her to arrive any time soon. She charged up her arm cannon ready to strike at any moment given as the Pirates gave a dead stare at her with their weapons ready before one of them started to betray the others. Samus was confused even more at the fact that another Pirate, not in the type of armor she would ever come into contact with a Pirate, was helping the other lone wolf to become another traitor, much as if they were a couple of criminals within their ranks. Even she saw most of the Pirates in the whole group, confused and angered about their own kind turning on against them.

Samus wondered if it was due to them not being infected with phazon or that they just despised the whole group that they were involved with and get Samus as a prize of their own; something that their high command would probably be pleased, much like from what she has read in the past about the Pirates from Zebes and their leaders, Mother Brain and Ridley.

After both of the Pirates managed to kill every other Pirate in the room, one of them transformed back into their original self that was none other than Gandrayda herself.

"I'm never gonna get used to Space Pirate gray," Gandrayda giggled.

Samus turned her gaze towards the other Pirate, who seemingly looked like he wasn't changing at all and didn't look like he was bloodthirsty to serve Samus' head as a trophy for their kind, much like every other Space Pirate she's seen so far.

"So are you both working together?" Samus asked bluntly, while still aiming her arm cannon at the Space Pirate in yellow armor.

"I mean to do no harm," Orion replied hesitantly with his usual lizard-like voice. He felt different seeing The Hunter in person as he didn't expect to feel anxiety or even fear when confronting the archenemy of the Space Pirate species as a whole. "Consider it to be a long story."

"Don't take it all the wrong way, Sammy," stated Gandrayda with a smirk on her face. "Once we get everything working again and get rid of that thing falling above us in the sky, I can do the explaining to everyone working for the Federation." She looked down as she gave a slight sigh and then told Samus in a lowered voice, "Dark Samus is still alive..."

"What!?" Samus gasped. "But I thought... I..."

"I know," she replied. "But it makes sense as to why everything that's happening right now is all because of that dark twin sister of yours. That's why after learning about who Orion really is and what he's really up against, there's no doubt that your dark doppelganger is still alive somewhere. Just watch your back if you see anything strange going on and about. We'll leave you to activate this Generator and return back to where the entrance of the control tower is on the double."

"Fine," Samus complied. "Ghor is already waiting there. Help him put up a defensive position against anyone who tries to get through." She then pointed at Orion. "And make sure he doesn't do anything clever or else—"

"Hey it's me we are talking about," replied Gandrayda. "We've already gone through those terms. He seems to get it, but you never know. They're Pirates after all." Orion looked at her, offended by what she's said about him and his other fellow Pirates, but Gandrayda continued to ignore him as she walked past Samus. "Anyway, have fun Sammy!"

As the Pirate followed after Gandrayda, he stopped and turned to Samus a bit nervously. He began telling her what he wanted to tell her, before leaving the room and following Gandrayda.

"If you wanna know more about your parents when you were a kid, I can give you some footages that I managed to recover from the stolen Federation databases that the Space Pirates have gained access to. You would never find it elsewhere since they were all erased from Federation history since the invasion of Earth colony, K-2L."

Samus gave a wide expression look on her face. Her parents? Footages? What could he possibly have anything to say or show her about since her early life at K-2L? It could all be just a lie or maybe he was trying to make up for what his own kind has done to her homeplanet. At any rate, she had more stuff to worry about than her own past, so she tried to wash away all of those thoughts and move on to activating the last generator they needed.

As Orion gave a last look on Samus before leaving right away, she stopped him on his tracks.

"Wait!" She said as the freelanced Pirate stopped silently without looking back at her. "Are we— am I... able to trust you?" Samus didn't know why she asked this, especially when she deeply has a hatred for Space Pirate kind. She'll never forget the fact that it's the Space Pirate's fault for her becoming an orphan and growing up without her parents, who were killed during the invasion of her homeplanet.

Orion tilted his fishlike-head slightly to his right and replied before leaving the area for good, "That... is for you to decide, Hunter."

"Wait, but I really need to know if—"

It was already too late. The Pirate left the room just as she wanted to ask him something in particular. She cleared her mind for a moment before heading back to activating Gen. C.

After scanning the whole room with her scan visor, she learned that either Gandrayda or Orion did some handiwork behind the Pirates' back as the codes for activating the backup power for the pipelines to connect all the way on top of the giant conduit, was already put in on the terminal and all it needed was confirmation, in order to reach the final bomb slot all the way on top of the large cylinder that activates the main power of the generator. As she confirmed it, the maintenance shafts around the room began to activate and connected their way up on top of the oversized conduit for a bomb slot reactivation.

"Right," she said to herself. "Now all I need is to just reach on top, activate the main power, then authorize the reactivation of the generator, and back to the control tower."

Samus put herself in morph ball mode and began to do her usual work like always. Reaching all the way on top wasn't hard, but required a lot of patience when the machinery around the room was getting in her way inside the pipelines. Not like she wasn't used to things like that, but it did annoy her every time when infiltrating tight spaces in her morph ball form. After reaching all the way on top and activating the main power, she finally let out a sigh of relief when her patience was about to spill to the ground.

"Finally! Now, to get this over with and then head back with the others."

There was a loud thud on top of the dark ceiling.

She couldn't see what caused it since it was dark and her scan visor didn't detect anything unusual in the darkness. She thought it was all in her head due to so many things in her mind.

Another loud thud came to life.

This time, she was, sure enough, it wasn't all in her mind. A thermal or dark visor would've been perfect for this type of situation to look through the dark, but sadly enough, she dropped all of her past upgrades either because Metroid Prime's dying essence core absorbed most of her upgrades, left most of them behind during her time at the distant Tetra Galaxy, or she gave them away to their respective owners, the Luminoth. Looking closer at the dark ceiling was a silhouette of something familiar, but terrifying. Once it began to growl and scream at her, it then started to breathe fire, lighting up the whole area around him.

"RIDLEY!" She yelled in full of anger and frustration.

She fired as many shots as she could, not stopping at anything, until Ridley immediately went flying towards her with full potential, breaking through the giant structure and falling down into the depths of darkness, taking Samus with him. At that moment, Samus didn't care about anything but wanting to get rid of him once and for all before either of them winds up dead upon impact towards the core of the generator.

 **And... that's it for this chapter!**

 **As a first-time fanfiction/crossover writer, I very much appreciate the amount of people that are reading my fanfic, if not, at least skimming through what you would like to read or look forward to in the future. And thank you for all the follows and favorites! Again, sorry for the large gap within the uploading process. Next chapter is currently being written and probably have it posted before Christmas, if not, before New Year's!**


	11. Chapter 11: Deep Impact

**This chapter kicks it off with Rundas, Wash, and Carolina's point of view.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 11: Deep Impact_

"Our guns aren't doing anything!" Wash said in a panic. The pesky blue-eyed Pirates were infusing their guns and shields with phazon from their own bodies, rendering them invulnerable to normal conventional weapons. "What are we going to do now?!"

"We can't even fight them out here in the open!" Said Carolina as a wave of enemies were coming in their direction. "We're gonna have to push through and hope for the best!"

"As much as I hate to run from these fragile freaks, Carolina is right!" Said Rundas who couldn't believe in himself towards admitting his compliance. "We have to make our way through them and head back to the last generator we need to activate!"

The trio was being surrounded and since their weapons couldn't do anything against the phazon-infected Pirates, they found themselves to have no other choice but to get them out of the way with everything they've got.

"Get back!" Rundas ordered to the duo.

He began freezing any of the Pirates who tried blocking their way as he hovered across the dock with his ice powers, while both of the freelancers grabbed one of their scythes and slashed through some that were unfortunate enough to stay frozen long enough for them to slash them into pieces. Most didn't stay frozen for long before they managed to free themselves from the ice and tried getting rid of the bounty hunter and the freelancers before they finally escaped the area and roared in anger.

"Too close for comfort I'd say," stated Carolina as she took a deep breath with the others while leaning against the wall for a brief moment. "But we still have to keep going."

"Right," said Rundas as he was checking his integral status report on his suit for any possible damage.

"Geez, I can't stand the pain I'm getting on my right knee," Wash began to complain about the cramps he was getting. It wasn't because he was getting old but because after much severe training and sustaining multiple injuries in the past, it has been starting to take its toll.

"Aww... is Wash becoming an old man?" Carolina teased him.

"What? No! It's just that after all these years of training and fighting, it's been— ugh... whatever!"

After their brief rest, they continued onwards. Throughout their journey to the cargo area, not one Pirate was there to interfere with them, except for some crawltanks and other drones that appeared at random places. Just as they arrived at the cargo room, where the control tower's entrance was located, Ghor has already beaten them there, fighting more of the relentless drones that tried to come after them.

They joined forces with Ghor as soon as the trio saw what he was going up against. Wave after wave, they fought on for what seemed to be an eternity until the last crawltank fell and blew up into small fragments, demolishing any of the last crawlmines within the vicinity.

"And I thought... we've seen the last of them," Carolina struggled to take deep breathes after a long fight against the merciless drones.

"Talk about being old, Carol," Wash teased her back after seeing how many deep breathes she was taking, like a tired old-aged lady.

"Oh shut up!" She exclaimed in annoyance. "And don't ever call me that. Reminds me of my ex-boyfriend when he learned about my codename for Project Freelancer and started calling me that ever since. The next time we met, it didn't end well for him."

"Oh, I uh... didn't know... about that," Wash turned red and felt uncomfortable after hearing what she said about her ex since he knew exactly how far she would go under situations like that. He decided to change the subject afterward, in case Carolina felt like doing something harsh to him, "So um... shouldn't we go on ahead to the next generator or see how Samus is—"

"She's already on her way there," Ghor interrupted him broadly. He was still wearing his suit and with his altered personality, he began to explain what they needed to know. "We must form a defensive position and once Samus activates the last generator, we head on to the elevator leading to the control tower, with or without her."

"I'm sure she's able to handle her own pretty well, considering her past history with successful missions like preventing Space Pirates or phazon from taking over multiple planets like Zebes, Tallon IV, or Aether," said Rundas as he was checking their surroundings to see if there were any more of those creepy robotic crawlers hiding around somewhere.

"Sounds pretty much like our lives, considering what us, soldiers from the UNSC regions, have been through," said Carolina with some slight jealousy, though it wasn't like she couldn't take control over it; something that was a major issue to her in the past when being compared to others with people like Tex. She continued, "Planets like Sidewinder and Chorus have been quite a lot of stress to take in when it came to going against the insurrectionists, space pirate mercenaries, and even our own fallen corporation, Project Freelancer. I'm mainly talking about groups of human beings, corrupted with power and hungry for more. Even the corporation we used to work for was no different than them."

"I'm guessing this is why they chose you both in order to give out a good hand here," Rundas commented.

"We're part of another group, though. We only joined here because—"

Carolina was cut off by the sound of the door, leading to Gen. C, opening as everyone in the room aimed their weapons at that specific direction, until they caught a glimpse of what seemed to be Gandrayda.

"Nice party we've got here," she said with a light-hearted tone as if she has just entered through the gates of a theme park.

"Is Samus with you?" Asked Wash.

"No, but there's someone I'd like you guys to meet."

"There's no time to be dating people in a time like this!" Exclaimed Ghor. Nobody knew whether he was joking around, being serious about it, or even both, due to his altered persona still taking over his whole brain network through his suit.

Just as the same door opened again, a Pirate came walking through.

Everyone aimed their guns at him and were about to shoot him until Gandrayda interfered, much to everyone's surprise.

"He's a friendly, don't shoot!"

"What do you mean he's a friendly?" A confused Wash asked. "It's a Space Pirate, isn't it?"

"You better tell us what's going on here young lady or else!" Ghor walked in front of the Space Pirate as he grabbed him and squeezed him tightly, ready to crush him to death. He faced the Pirate eye to eye and told him, "I don't mind spilling blood out of a Space Pirate with my own hands."

"Ghor, STOP!" Gandrayda demanded fiercely, something that was now out her character. "Orion's a part of us now! Look I hate Space Pirate gray more than anyone combined in this room, but this Pirate is gonna help us out with more intel about Dark Samus and the army she's been raising for months!"

Everyone in the room looked at her, either distraught or confused all at once.

"Dark Samus?" Said Rundas in disbelief.

"She's still... ALIVE?!" Exclaimed Ghor in a fearsome tone, still holding the Pirate tightly into his giant robotic hand on his suit.

"Yes, just like you heard. And if you want to know more about what's going on around here, he's gleaned on a lot of information about Dark Samus and the army she's been raising for the past few months, using the rest of what's left of the Pirates as martyrs of her cause," Gandrayda turned to face the struggling Pirate within Ghor's grasp, as he seemingly couldn't resist for much longer. She continued to explain, making sure that whatever she was saying, matched with his story. "He and a group of other Space Pirates, who went undercover, arrived here to infiltrate the actions of the other Pirates, who devote themselves directly to Dark Samus herself, including the dragon-like creature, Ridley. Believe it or not, Ridley is not just following orders from a giant one-eyed brain-dead AI, but from one of the most corrupted beings in the whole galaxy, or maybe even the universe in its entirety."

The other bounty hunters and freelancers tried to digest everything they heard, but Wash and Carolina knew nothing about this "Dark Samus" or even the name "Ridley".

Gandrayda then turned to plead to Ghor, "Please, I know you want to kill him for a better cause in stopping these Pirates from taking what's not theirs, but he is one of us now, whether we like it or not. If he does anything clever, I'll be there to take the blame. Right now, all we need to do is focus on the bigger picture here; the giant fireball heading directly at us and Dark Samus being behind everything."

Silence invaded the air around them for a brief moment afterward, until Ghor decided to let go of the Pirate in yellow armor.

"After this is over, me and you are going to have a nice talk about this," said Ghor in a threatening tone.

"Consider it... done," Orion said after trying to catch his breath for several seconds.

Surprisingly, Orion wasn't feeling any more anxious than what he felt when being around The Hunter. He was used to getting threats rubbed to his face, even within his own rank, but were much worse than whatever hell, Ghor was trying to give him. The Hunter got her nickname for a reason, hence why Orion felt uneasy when facing her in person, as not one Space Pirate was successful in capturing The Hunter, dead or alive.

After a small moment, he turned to face everyone else in the room, ready to introduce himself, "In the case that none of you know, my actual name is Vel 'Acacius. Orion is just a codename I go by within my ranks. You all can call me by whichever name you choose out of those choices."

 _Vel 'Acacius? Interesting name..._ Wash thought in his mind about the Pirate. It's not like he never dealt with aliens before, but having to directly interact with one and from an alien race that's considered a major threat to humans and other intelligent beings in this region, he was beginning to think that both his and Carolina's lives were about to go through major turns. He wasn't fond of interacting with other aliens, especially after what happened when he betrayed everyone whom he showed care for in exchange for his own freedom, but what other choice does he have now? As he gave into his thoughts about it, he turned to Carolina to see if she had anything else to say about this whole situation, but all she seemed to do was staring down at the ground. He walked closer to her in order to make sure she was doing fine.

"Hey, Carolina?" He called for her attention. "Is everything alright?"

No response. It was as if she were Lopez with her main power turned off or went into standby mode. Wash didn't feel like everything was alright after seeing Carolina just frozen in thought, glaring at the ground beneath her. Then after a brief moment, she gave out a low response.

"Dark Samus..." she said with anxiety behind her voice, "a dark figure that looked almost identical to the original Samus."

"Wait, what?" Said Wash in confusion. "You've seen her?"

Everyone turned towards the freelancers, as Wash's phrase grabbed everyone's attention.

"Seen who, again?" Asked Rundas.

"I'm with him on this one," commented Grandrayda.

Carolina then began to turn to everyone else around her and then turned directly to Wash.

"Wash, that thing I saw when we first split up to go activate the first two generators, my radioactive sensors were rising at high peaks. Pools of phazon were all over and sometime later, that's when something came crashing down into the base and that laugh was... something that can drive you insane in your sleep. She or it, all of a sudden, disappeared in thin air as small blue particles right before my eyes! It was as if she knew I was falling directly into a trap!" She then grabbed Wash by the shoulders looked at him, face to face. "If this 'Dark Samus' creature is as dangerous as they say she is, no one out there will be prepared for the disasters that she might bring and everyone is going to either suffer or die!"

"Hey, calm down! That's why we are here, right? So long as we finish what we came here for, we'll be fine," Wash reassured her, grabbing both of her hands and dropping them slowly off from his shoulders.

"Yes, but—" she stopped for a moment before finally spitting out the rest of her sentence, "I just don't wanna lose anyone else anymore..."

"I know that feeling," Was replied, still remembering how he almost lost Carolina not so long ago, not to mention everything they've gone through together in past years.

Soon after, Vel took a good listen of the two and offered them some advice in dealing with Dark Samus, or as he and his kind would say, the Dark Hunter.

"You want to know how to take down the Dark Hunter? You are going to need some outside help as everyone's current equipment will be of no match against hers. As you humans say, only if you play fire with fire, will you be able to defeat her in battle and that is if you have enough concentrated firepower at full capacity with similar augmented weaponry as her. The only main conflict with this solution is that, in theory, you will not be able to handle such power on your own and will put you at high risk of going under the influence of the corrupt powers of phazon itself, transforming you into something far more dangerous than what you can imagine. Death will become a luxury after that."

Taking all of that into account was probably more frightening than they thought it would be. Not one person in the room was ready to admit that they felt their skin crawl all around them as they felt frightened about becoming a pure phazon being like Dark Samus just for the sake of getting rid of her for good.

"How are we able to know you're telling the truth?" Asked Wash, hesitant on whether to take Vel's word for it or not. For all he knew, he could just be trying to get into their heads or something worse.

"When the time comes, you will see the light of the truth that I speak," said Vel.

There was a loud roar coming from outside of the base. It didn't sound like any type of aircraft they've come to known or any other friendly reinforcements.

"Guys, I think we've got a new problem," warned Rundas as he was looking through the cracked roof of the base above them where a dark shadow overpowered the sunlight that shined on them.

"Ridley, you bastard!" Exclaimed Ghor, who knew exactly who or what it was that was flying above the base. "It seems like he's calling out an army of Space Pirates to raid inside the facility once more in this section of the base. Quickly! We must prepare ourselves for the worst to happen!"

"So that's Ridley," said Carolina as she watched him fly over them.

"Always the typical evil dragon from your average fairytale. Hmph, never gets old," commented Gandrayda as she took a small chuckle.

Just as Ghor said, Ridley has called out for reinforcements as a wave of Space Pirates came bursting inside the cargo room, in which the group was located. Every Pirate that raided the facility were all phazon-infected Pirates and none of them seemed to recognize who Vel 'Acacius actually was, other than a traitor who never joined their ranks with Ridley and Dark Samus. Vel knew one of them in particular, however. It was his own best friend who has fallen victim under the influence of the dark power he was warned about. Vel 'Acacius felt sympathetic for a brief moment, yet, didn't nearly feel half as bad as he did when he was about to kill Gandrayda back in the mothership he used to be stationed at. He then pretended that he was just another blue-eyed Pirate that he needed to now take care of.

And so he did, without much hesitation along with the rest of the group he was in.

 _Good riddance, you fool..._ he said in his mind as he quickly managed to overpower him and kill him along with others that were coming towards their way. So long as they were far too gone with phazon sickness, he wouldn't mind taking them out, but those that weren't infected and used to be his comrades who vowed to take orders from the Dark Hunter herself, he'd feel like death was a mercy he would gladly grant them as part of honoring his own kind in part of redemption for their betrayals.

Rundas was probably more worried about Samus than anyone else in the room as he knew that Ridley was already on his way to Generator C and dispatched most of his blue-eyed army to try and breach through the elevator in order to stop them from activating the defense system, should Samus succeed in her mission before or even after his arrival. He thought to himself if he should leave everyone here and help Samus fight off Ridley or just continue helping everyone here and wait for Samus' arrival. Not knowing what was going on with her was haunting him, but a part of him knew that Samus was going to be fine on her own, much like every time she gets sent on a solo mission, like him. He finally decided to stay and fight the pesky Pirates that were trying to breach through their defenses and couldn't help but pray for Samus' safety as she was like a sister to him.

* * *

 _Meanwhile..._

The deafening sound of metal and glass breaking apart made Samus' suit vibrate on impact as it was designed to withstand even the loudest noises and impacts that even a Chozo is able to endure without the suit, compared to that of a human's physical characteristics. She found herself to be free-falling into a deep abyss as she turned her head to an endless pit and saw nothing but a dark tunnel, glowing in red as she approached it faster than the average speeding car.

 _Impact imminent in... 16800 meters_

 _16700 meters_

 _16600 meters_

 _16500 meters_

Her visor kept on reading the amount of distance left before a deep impact was about to happen between her and the main energy core of Generator C. It was almost as if every one hundred meters was a second closer to her inevitable doom.

 _This can't be any good.._ she thought of the obvious.

Not long after she was able to see her surroundings, she saw Ridley above her, taunting her as both of them were falling in the same direction, almost as if they were destined to share the same fate, but Ridley wasn't bothered by it at all. His mind was more focused on to simply have Samus terminated one way or another, even if it meant to die along with her.

"RAAAWR!" Ridley roared at her in fury. "I should have killed you when you were just a kid if I knew how much of a nuisance you were going to be! Now, DIE!"

He charged at her directly to her direction at high speed and managed to take a grip on Samus just before she tried to do anything to avoid him until it was already too late. He began to squeeze her tightly and prepared his giant claw in order to have Samus grow weak after each hit he'd try to do to her.

"If we are going to have to share a coffin together, I rather you go in first!" Raged Samus as she prepared to shoot him multiple missiles to his mouth, along with a fully charged beam shot to his glowing hand that caused Ridley to scream in pain and drop Samus into the abyss once more.

"You think you can kill me? After having tried multiple times in the past?!" Ridley boasted as he began to prepare a projectile attack on her. "You cannot kill me! I will always keep returning from the grave, so long as you are still ALIVE!"

A big wave of fire sprung to life from Ridley's breath as he began following his aim to wherever Samus decided to move. Samus tried her best to avoid his beam of fire as even her Varia Suit wasn't able to handle such heat from the projectile as it was fully concentrated with both plasma and fire. It hit her a couple of times, which made Samus grunt in pain for several seconds after having contact with it, but it didn't stop her from shooting concentrated amounts of beam shots at his mouth, where it was the most vulnerable spot he had, along with his chest. Both kept on sharing hard hits to one another, which only managed to fuel them with anger by each hit that was thrown to one another.

 _10500 meters_

 _10400 meters_

 _10300 meters_

Looking back at the distance left before imminent impact, the countdown wasn't stopping for anything as it would only go faster with many hits endured by both Samus and Ridley that would only keep sending them further into the depths of whatever hell was waiting for them deep into the abyss. After having to fight Ridley for what seemed to be like an eternity, she had enough for what Ridley has done to her in the past. If she was going to die at any moment in time, she would have to make sure that she kills Ridley for good before being killed by the impact itself. She sent a hailstorm of missiles towards his chest, in which most missed on the spot, but some managed to hit him directly into where it was most painful to him and tried to concentrate her fire to his mouth, where it began to make him feel weak as time went on.

Ridley, having a similar hatred with that of Samus, tried everything in his power to protect his weak spots and concentrated on throwing projectiles of intense fire and electricity to have her stunned and be sure to get as many hits as he could against Samus. Some of his projectiles would manage to take Samus by surprise, stunning her and taking major blows from Ridley's claws and sharp tail that could easily break normal human bones if not protected by any suit resilient to high damage.

 _5200 meters_

 _5100 meters_

 _5000 meters_

"Give up now and I'll make sure your death will become quick and painless, just like mommy and daddy!"

Samus could not believe what Ridley has just told her. This enraged her even more to the point that she wasn't even thinking rationally or carefully, and quickly retorted against Ridley by getting closer to him, grabbing him by the mouth as she opened it as wide as she could and began screaming at him with every shot she put into him, fueled with hatred, anger, and desperation as tears begin to drop inside her helmet with intense emotions that came flowing through her.

"Don't you... EVER...! EVER! MENTION...! MY...! PARENTS! YOU BASTARD!"

One final missile and a fully charged beam shot were enough to take Ridley down. Dead or unconscious, it didn't matter to her now. His body was probably either going to disintegrate or was going to undergo heavy fractures all over, making sure he will stay dead this time around. Samus felt relieved as she has just avenged her parents for sure, but at the same time, she knew that her time was running out and everything that was once in her mind, was coming in a flash; her homeplanet, K-2L, her second homeplanet, Zebes, her biological parents, Virginia and Rodney Aran, from the little moments she could remember with them, the Chozo that once took care of her after her parents' death, her father-figure and former commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, her brother-figure, Rundas, and everyone else who she has met both in the past and recent times.

 _WARNING! IMPACT IMMINENT IN 10, 9, 8, 7, 6_

Everything that flowed inside her mind was hitting her hard emotionally, like someone trying to rip her from the inside out. She kept thinking of the things she was about to leave behind and mostly left unfinished; something that made Samus drop silently in tears as she closed her eyes and prepared for her imminent doom.

Then, there was something or someone that caught her in mid-air. It was a gentle catch and after a few moments of thinking whether she was still alive or dead as a ghost, relieving the same moment of the impact she may have taken not so long ago, the shocking idea made her black out completely and laid in the arms of the unknown person or entity that caught her moments before her death.

 **And that's that!**

 **Sorry I didn't get this chapter up on time. I finished up this chapter and was almost done with the next one, until some sort of corruption failure in my flash drive forced me to format it and everything I wrote for this chapter went back to square one, along with the other one. I gave up on trying to rewrite them for a couple of weeks until I finally came to terms with it and got over it. This chapter was probably going to be slightly different, but more ideas came to mind so I just dropped whatever came up in my brain for this chapter.**

 **One more thing, I made up a name for Orion (which isn't really an original character, but also not much of an official character either) and his actual name is Vel 'Acacius. Vel, meaning a war god, and Acacius, meaning not evil or just innocent. We all know Space Pirates are in no way innocent, but I felt like Acacius was a good name for Orion as he isn't necessarily evil, for the most part anyway, but we shall see. :3**

 **Next chapter is probably going to be up by next month most likely, if not, a bit earlier, but as I said before, I can't really make any promises. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter and look forward to the next one!**


	12. Chapter 12: Hope or Despair

**Next up, a continuation directly from Samus' point of view. I'll tell you now that this chapter might be the longest to date. I might even have longer chapters in the future too so I hope that won't be a problem, so long as I continue writing this without giving a permanent** **hiatus.**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 12: Hope or Despair_

"Samus, Samus!" The unknown familiar voice kept repeating her name. After no response, they called out for Samus' name again. "Samus! Wake up! You've got a mission to do!

Samus tried lifting her head as she continued to struggle in regaining her consciousness. The voice then continued with a familiar phrase that she hasn't heard of since before she became a bounty hunter.

"Any objections, lady?"

"Wh-what?" She whispered, wondering for a moment as her vision was still blurred when trying to open her eyes carefully. "Adam? Is that... you?"

She sat up as she took her helmet off to take a deep breath and rub her temples due to a large headache she was experiencing. She then slowly began to rub her eyes in order to get a good grip on her surroundings. Once her headache began to fade away and her vision started to become clearer, she found out that the person who had saved her was none other than Rundas himself.

"There's the Samus I know; good and alive!" He said with a light-hearted tone.

"Rundas?" She couldn't believe that he has risked himself of losing his powers near the extreme heating environment in the abyss from where she almost fell to her death. Any second longer within the extreme heat and he could have potentially perished along with her. "Thank you. I'd probably be dead if it weren't for-"

"Don't worry about it," he said calmly, "even if it meant risking my own life, I'd do it a million times over." Rundas gave Samus a hand to help her stand up and then questioned Samus about a certain somebody that she was whispering about. "And who's Adam, by the way?"

"Oh umm..." Samus hesitated for a bit before finally answering, "He used to be my commanding officer and is more of a father-figure to me. I hear his voice sometimes whenever I'm in situations like this. I guess it's just something that happens whenever you admire someone deeply."

"I don't blame you," he sympathized, "I also hear my brother's voice whenever I'm in dangerous situations and every time I hear him, he would only tell me to keep going and never give up, no matter how much you feel like you're losing. His voice was there all along when I went in to save you down there. It kept me going, even after feeling I wasn't going to make it in time."

"Well, I'm glad to say that we have something else in common, right?" Said Samus as she put back her helmet on. "Anyway, how's everyone else doing?"

"I was just helping them take out some blue-eyed Pirates. After finishing up killing most of them, I decided to check up on you as I knew that dastardly dragon was going to put up a fight against you when he flew right above us. I'm glad I came when I did or else..."

"Thanks again. I know I can always count on you, even when I never do ask for the help directly," replied Samus, gratefully.

"Well, I should leave you to turn on this last generator, I'll let the others know to get ready for a whole turning point on this invasion."

"Right, I'll catch up with you guys in a bit."

Rundas nodded before leaving Samus to activate the last generator needed to reactivate the defense cannon.

Walking down next to the computer panel behind her, she began the process of activating the generator with her digitalized handprint on her power suit, turning on the main lights and shaft that led right into the deep hell she went through just before.

"Okay, everything seems to be in working order..." she said to herself as she stared at the whole room before confirming that the generator was fully powered on.

Before she managed to leave the generator room for good, an alarm started to go off, lighting the whole entire base in a crimson color. The lights that remained in its original state began flickering as small tremors rocked the whole base with small debris falling off from the roof of the base. Samus thought it was due to an impending attack from the Pirates themselves but later realized that the tremors were all due to the air strikes from both factions of the invasions. A female voice was then heard from all around the base announcing a danger that Samus nearly forgot how much closer it was than ever before.

 _"Attention all personnel! Meteor impact will occur in 5 minutes! Repeat! Meteor impact will occur in 5 minutes!"_

"Time to hassle!" She told herself loudly.

As she fought her way through the corridors outside of Generator C, her radio beeped to life and the Aurora Unit that briefed the bounty hunters and freelancers, from what seemed to be long ago, appeared in her visor like a ghost.

"Samus," it said, "all efforts to stop the meteor have failed. Our only remaining chance of stopping that meteor is the defense cannon itself. You and three other hunters are required to get to the control tower and fire it. Only registered bounty hunters are able to bypass the security system of the defense mechanism. You must join the others immediately."

"I'm already on my way there," she answered. "Hopefully, there won't be anything to hinder my way through there."

"Would you like me to upload the coordinates to the control tower for you?" The AU 242 asked.

"No. I think I may have everything memorized by now. Thanks, anyway."

Samus' last reply was the only thing that 242 heard before cutting off communication with her. Now that Samus was outside, she saw something bright in the sky, as if a shooting star was passing by closely. Unfortunately for her and everyone else on the planet, it wasn't just a close up look at a shooting star but the same meteor that was previously mentioned by 242 and the Admiral. Just minutes before, it only looked like a small bright dot in the sky but now it seemed like a giant bright fireball that was about to rain hard on the planet itself, which could cause devastating consequences if not stopped in time.

"I can't let this planet suffer the same fate as Tallon IV and Aether before it," she told herself in her mind while trying to sound hopeful at once. "I wasn't there to help those other planets before impact but I'm here now to help this one and prevent another worldwide catastrophe from happening."

As she made her way to the other side of the base in her morph ball mode, she sensed incoming Pirate ships towards her, but they weren't there to kill her on sight. They were actually deploying their phazon-infected forces into the room on the other side of the door she needed to enter, much to Samus' frustration. Out of her morph ball mode and once upon entering inside Conduit C, her fears came to be true as large forces of blue-eyed Pirates were ready to face Samus and prevent her from joining up with the others.

"Ugh! Give me a break already!"

* * *

 _Meanwhile in the cargo hub area..._

"Man do these Pirates take up more bullets than normal!" Wash growled as he kept shooting on the Pirates that got closer to him. "I'm already running low on ammo on everything!"

"Stop your complaining and keep taking them out with your mouth shut!" Exclaimed Ghor, who was still in his suit while fighting off the Pirates with his giant robotic bare hands.

Wash wanted to retaliate against Ghor for a moment before realizing they were on the same side after all. Plus, it reminded him of his early relationship with the reds and blues and the way he acted upon them. It was as if he was looking at his own reflection within Ghor himself which in part, made Wash feel uncomfortable just by having to think about it.

Carolina and Gandrayda seemed to have a better relationship than Ghor and Wash, to some extent. The two were seen to be punching and kicking every Pirate coming at them with all the strength they got, keeping each other's back from one end to another, much like a duo who have trained together since their early days in the military. However, much like to anyone else's annoyance with Gandrayda's childish actions, it was no better on Carolina's part.

"You've got some moves, Caroline," Gandrayda commented casually. "Mind if I ask who taught you that would inadvertently make us look like sisters?"

"My name is Carolina!" She huffed at her as she knocked out a Pirate with a powerful roundhouse kick, expressing her anger even further. "And mind your own business!"

"Well, if we are gonna be working together from here on out, might as well get to know each other a little bit better, am I right?"

Carolina ignored her request and kept killing more Pirates coming to their way, this time, with more force and frustration at the fact that Gandrayda was spilling her patience to the ground.

Vel was busy taking out his own infected comrades with his powerful entrusted scythe while being resentful and sympathetic all at once. However, he saw the whole thing with Carolina and Gandrayda in the corner of his eye and fully understood Carolina's frustration. He had to go through a similar process with Gandrayda and almost managed to shoot her dead. The fact that he had the strength of not shooting her directly made him think that if he was able to resist in doing so, then Carolina, whom he saw as a soldier trying to do what's best for her and her space colony, along with the other steel-colored soldier, could very well handle their relationship better than he did with Gandrayda. At least due to him being a Space Pirate himself.

Several minutes passed by and the last remaining Pirates were thrown to oblivion. Just after the last infected Pirate was taken care of, everyone dropped down to rest for a bit, still waiting on Rundas and Samus' return. All they could hear in the base were the alarms screaming all around them with small explosions still throwing the entire base in a state of tremors. All of the generators were online and the entrance to the elevator leading up to the control tower was now open.

However, during their fight against the incoming waves of the phazon-infected Pirates, they were informed that at least four bounty hunters, who are registered within the Federation, were required to activate the defense cannon. There was only two present; Ghor and Gandrayda. The freelancers didn't count as bounty hunters since they weren't formally registered within the Federation itself and were only granted access inside Federation property under Dane's command. Vel wasn't even part of the Federation either and unbeknownst to them, he was in fact, already on their side of the fight, at least for now. At this point, it would only seem plausible that he was already wanted by his own species due to his actions with the hunters and freelancers. Although he was unsure if a few, to some degree, would agree with him working alongside the Federation in order to prevent further phazon corruption within the entire cosmos that could potentially seal all of their combined fates forever.

Having already heard the female voice before during their defense against the Pirates, it once again announced the amount of time left before an imminent danger was to come and abolish everyone on the planet.

 _"4 minutes, until meteor impact!"_

Not long afterward, they heard a door open at a distance, startling almost everyone. They all began to stand on their guard until having realized it was Rundas who have returned after having left for Samus. Before anyone could say a word, they realized that Samus was still missing and hasn't come along with the ice hunter.

"Whatever happened to dear old Sammy?" Asked Gandrayda with a slightly worried look on her face.

"She'll be fine," reassured Rundas. "There were some more of those Pirates coming to our way too so it took some time before I managed to get here."

"You missed a few," said Carolina as they have fought more waves of Space Pirates just recently. "Lucky for you, we managed to stand against them." She began to look around towards the control tower entrance and back at the group, wondering if they should either move on forward or wait it out until the last bounty hunter would arrive. "So... what are we going to do now?"

"Wait for Samus to come back, I guess?" Wash suggested. "We only have three bounty hunters with us and Samus is the only one missing."

"Way to go, Mr. Captian Obvious," Carolina teased him.

Wash gave a small gesture, expressing his annoyance on Carolina's statement, "Ugh... really?! I mean, I was only merely trying to-"

"We've got a problem!" Ghor interrupted with his loud, deep voice.

"Now what?" Said Carolina, feeling frustrated to be hearing bad news every minute or so.

"Elevator's stuck on something!" He said furiously as he tried shooting whatever was stuck on the sides of the elevator with his plasma cannon, to no avail. "Seems like it got caught up with some mass of rubble during the initial attacks. I don't think our current arsenal would do much to help!"

"Stand aside," Vel ordered. "Let me handle it."

"What's a Pirate like YOU going TO DO?!" He inquired directly with a dark tone.

Vel didn't say a word and continued on with what he had in plan. He took out his scythe, along with a small glowing blue capsule filled with phazon and spilled the liquid phazon over it. The substance seemed to be fused with another chemical that caused it to have an even higher concentration of corrosive properties that when spilled, it dissolved much of the alloy that the ground was made of, instantaneously. The Pirate's scythe, however, seemed to be resistant to such properties and went on his way to destroy every piece of debris that was stuck on the elevator, carefully trying to avoid contact with the material from the elevator, in case it would cause a malfunction within. One stab after another, the group only stared at the Pirate at work.

"All done," he said calmly, shaking his scythe a little to dry it up and put it away afterward.

"Can't say I'm not impressed," commented Gandrayda, smiling at the thought of a Space Pirate actually doing something useful for them.

Ghor took a small gaze on the freelanced Pirate, still thinking he was going to spell trouble sooner or later, but he couldn't deny the fact that because of him, they are now able to gain access directly to the control room inside the tower. He put his thoughts aside and signaled everyone else to gather around in the elevator's platform.

"Now, let's all wait for Samus to arrive," he emphasized to everyone in the group. "If she doesn't get here within the minute, we're gonna have to force our way through without her!"

Rundas wanted to go and try to see if Samus was alright once more, but something in his mind told him that this time it wouldn't be necessary to go back and get Samus since they couldn't afford to lose another bounty hunter during their wait on a tight countdown and make them worry more than they need to. So he decided to calm himself down and promised himself that Samus will be here at any moment given.

The female voice that was heard throughout the base didn't care if anyone was already panicking and continued to announce the estimated time before their lives get taken away from them.

 _"3 minutes, until meteor impact!"_

"C'mon Samus... I know you can make it," he thought anxiously.

* * *

 _Moments earlier..._

One kick to the face, another to the other, a direct charged beam shot to another's mandible-like mouth, missiles and continuous beam shots towards those in hypermode, and still, they kept coming from all over directions. Samus didn't know when to keep up with this and the menacing blue-eyed Space Pirates knew that wasting enough of her time would prevent her from regrouping with the others and guarantee the meteor to strike the planet and corrupt it with whatever fierce power it had. Since there was little to no time fighting off every Pirate that came to her way, she decided to punch her way through them and head towards the exit to the other side. However, much to her disappointment, she found out that the exit was blocked off completely.

Turning back to where she came from, Samus realized that a group of aeromines were present, but these ones seemed to have some modifications to them. By using her scan visor, she learned that they had a programming that allows them to lock all doors within the vicinity, thus keeping her trapped until she had to deal with both the blue-eyed Pirates and their drones.

"A meteor that's about to hit a planet that I'm standing on and now I'm trapped in here with a bunch of bloodthirsty Pirates and drones? Couldn't get any better..." Samus thought in her mind.

Her frustration was only brief, as she has found a way on how to deal with every single one of her enemies inside the room she was trapped in. She saw that there were loose cables swinging around that were still charged with electricity. She could put them in good use by luring the Pirates near her and fry them off with the cables that were giving off powerful sparks of electricity. Then she could roll herself in front of the loose cables in her morph ball and lure the relentless drones into frying themselves, cutting the time off from having to kill them one by one.

 _"3 minutes, until meteor impact!"_

This announcement was her cue to execute her plans as soon as possible.

"Wish I had the wave beam upgrade," she thought.

She began to taunt the Pirates to come to her and fight like real bloodthirsty Pirates would do, instead of becoming failures to their dark leader.

"HEY!" She called them out. "You all are gonna be a bunch of idiotic failures if you don't end up killing me for your pathetic little dark 'mistress'!"

This angered the Pirates more than they already were and rushed at her, unknowingly that they were falling into her trap. At the right moment, she jumped over them and shoved the loose cables onto a group of four Pirates, frying them like batteries being overcharged with hundreds of volts than needed. The other group wasn't foolish enough to get near her and sprayed phazon hyper shots at her. Some even managed to hit her like powerful acidic shots that burned through her armor, making her grunt in pain for a short moment.

Not knowing what would be the most effective way of killing enemies turning to a hypermode state, she considered grabbing a dead Pirate's shield in hopes of deflecting hyper attacks. Much to her surprise, it actually managed to help her deflect them as needed. She concluded that, because the Pirates' weaponry is mostly composed of just false copies from original weaponry they have stolen from other colonies and civilizations, most of their weapons and defensive accessories would equal to one another, thus preventing for possible causes of friendly fire. Samus looked for a phazon-charged weapon anywhere she could, but every Pirate weapon she came across had just ordinary weapons and nothing related to phazon weaponry.

"What?!" She thought in disbelief. "How the hell do these Pirates use phazon as a weapon without needing actual phazon weapons for the radioactive material or even a PED suit with an external backpack, to begin with? Could it be that, due to phazon infection, they don't require the need to use such things?"

There was no time to look for answers. She had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Knocking down the group of Pirates, one by one, gave her enough time to get rid of the aeromines that kept her from getting out. As a last line of defense, the aeromines tried homing in on Samus as soon as they hit themselves against the sparking cables when Samus lured them in, but nearly hit her and instead, blew themselves up on the group of Pirates that were left standing, finishing them off completely. The termination of the aeromines caused the doors of both ends of Conduit C to unlock, quickly running towards the maintenance station, only to find out that there were even more aeromines waiting for her arrival.

"Wow, you guys are probably the most annoying little drones I've ever seen in a long while!" She said as she raised her arm cannon at them, frustratingly.

Realizing that she was running out of time and the others might already head on without her, promptly sealing their fates for a gamble they might not win against the security system, she decided to take in all the hits in her morph ball as the aeromines do minimal damage in her morph ball form. She waited for the aeromines to home in and explode near her.

As surprising as it was, it didn't take long before one of them started a chain reaction of small explosions that barely made Samus flinch within her morph ball. Thankfully, she didn't endure as much damage as she thought.

"I have to hurry!" She told herself after coming out of her morph ball form.

Having arrived at the cargo hub area, she saw that the whole group of freelancers and bounty hunters were just about to leave her behind until Wash managed to quickly stop them from doing so once he caught a glimpse on Samus.

"Hey! STOP!" He ordered and pointed them at Samus. "Look! Samus is right over there!"

"Sammy?" Gandrayda said as she also had a look on her before everyone else did.

"Over here!" Rundas hollered as he waved to Samus for their location.

Right after everyone noticed her presence, Samus quickly rushed forward before a couple of Space Pirates that followed her all the way through manage to get a good grip on her. Barely managing to evade them by mere inches, she shut off the entrance to the control tower and activated the elevator to go on their way to the control room.

"That was a close one," Samus panted, trying to catch her breath as the elevator started to move upwards. "Anyways... I'm back; in one piece for the most part."

 _"2 minutes, until meteor impact!"_

"You're late!" Gandrayda exclaimed, stealing the first phrase out of everyone's mouth after having heard the amount of time they have left. "We were about to leave you behind."

"I apologize," she replied, still panting at a lower volume. "There was just some loose ends that needed to be taken care of before I was even allowed to get here."

"You're feeling okay Samus? You seem more exhausted than most of us here," Wash asked with a concerned look through his helmet.

"I've been better," she told him.

"Don't worry about her," comforted Rundas. "She's gone through worse than before and it'll take more than just a flying cybernetically-enhanced Pirate dragon to put her out for good, right Samus?"

"Considering I was thrown into an extremely heated abyss and almost died right after fighting off my archnemesis, yeah... I think I've been through worse," Samus shot back, not minding whether she did sound serious enough or sarcastic at the end. Even she didn't know which was the worst time she's ever experienced when standing near death's door. "But I owe Rundas my life. If it wasn't for him, I would've probably never come back and if bypassing the security system via hacking wasn't going to work, we'd probably all die with the planet itself turning into nothing more than a wasteland."

"Wait, you mean Ridley or whatever that thing is called, was that one flying beast who put up a fight against you?" Sputtered Wash, looking surprised as he knew one ordinary-military man like him, or even as a freelancer himself, wouldn't seemingly stand a chance against it just by looking at it. "That thing looks a lot more intimidating than even one of our friend's old robotic mantis! Or even this dude with the giant suit of armor right next to me!"

Ghor turned to face Wash, looking both offended and satisfied at once. Wash didn't know if he was staring at him to intimidate him even more, but he simply turned to face the opposite direction, trying to ignore Ghor's intimidating stare that seemingly looked into his soul through both his visor and eyes.

"Right... Maybe... I take that back on what I just said," Wash mumbled softly, feeling embarrassed about himself.

Vel began to feel nervous again, after having yet again, to be in the same room with the same hunter that wiped out most of his Pirate forces, back in Zebes and other parts of the outer colonies, but he didn't let it get to him. He kept telling himself that, no matter what happens, his actions will be justified one way or the other, even if it meant dire consequences against himself, but for a better future; whether it be for his own kind that has yet to be under the control of The Dark Hunter or the people he has been fighting alongside with. He couldn't help the fact that even though some might still hate him for what his kind has done to most of them, they were starting to grow on him a little.

"After we finish doing what we came here to do," he said out loud, in order to grab everyone's attention, "I will help you out in any way you wish and then turn myself in. I am not willing to face execution as punishment for my current actions or suffer a fate worse than death itself. I understand that my brethren may have caused much trouble within your lives, but I am willing to do whatever it takes to protect the cosmos from this upcoming corruption coming to devour the light out of our very own souls; stained or not."

Gandrayda chuckled for a brief moment, "Well, don't get too comfy yet, Ori. We still have yet to see how the Federation themselves react to the fact that a Pirate is actually on our side for once. Not saying you are in official terms or capacity, but I think you know what I mean."

Samus still didn't know what to think about the freelanced Pirate herself; whether to see him as her teammate or enemy. "Listen, Orion, I don't know if you are actually trying to be on our side or not, but after this is over, it'll be me who gets to take you in and then see if there could be any deals that both you and the Federation can work out. Just remember that you could potentially face imprisonment for life if nothing gets to be worked out and even if something did, the possibility is still there."

"I'll take my chances," Vel replied, seemingly accepting whatever fate has in store for him by this point.

So much has happened since their debriefing back on the moon, Iris, and Carolina was still focusing on what has been going on lately, still running on fumes based upon what little, Samus have said compared to what she has experienced in this past couple of hours.

"Samus," she called to her.

"Yes?" She replied.

"You still need to tell us every single detail about these Pirates or anything else you have yet to fill us in about. Not to mention this, Ridley creature you never mentioned about until now."

Samus noticed her irritated expression faintly through her visor and answered back, "My apologies, but considering the lack of time we've had since then, I'm afraid I won't be able to tell you anything more until we finish what we came here for. I can't promise you anything, but I'll be making sure to fill you in on the rest of the details later."

"QUITE!" Ordered Ghor with the loudest and deepest voice he could do.

There was a moment of silence and they listened to the announcer that came to be counting down the number of seconds left, instead of just mere minutes.

 _"90 seconds, until meteor impact!"_

"Hear that?" He continued, "The meteor is approaching faster than you think!"

Gandrayda took a good look at above them and the entrance still seemed far away from them as the elevator was moving up at a steady pace, expecting it to go faster before the countdown drops to zero. At the same time, her hopes weren't going any higher and were already starting to look at the worst case scenario.

"You know, if we don't make it to the top in time, we can kiss this planet good-bye."

"Hey!" Rundas grabbed her attention before she continued saying anything else. "Relax, we're the good guys here. Justice will prevail and all that stuff..." He wasn't even sure if they were going to make it, but judging from his past actions, he still had something else to hope for by clinging with whatever optimism he had left to hold on to. He turned to Samus, hoping she would at least give him a nod towards his optimism, "Right, Samus?"

Samus didn't utter a word and was left closing her eyes, thinking about what Rundas said just now, before giving him a reluctant answer.

"I... hope so."

"If it was up to me, I wouldn't count on it..." Wash pointed out, thinking about his past experiences that proved to come at a high price for just about anything he ever did.

As the elevator closed to a stop just a few moments later, everyone on the elevator came to rush in towards the control room without any hesitation.

 _"70 seconds, until meteor impact"_

Samus and Rundas were among the first to arrive at the control panel and put their handprints on a blank screen that showed off a white-outlined handprint. Gandrayda and Ghor followed after and the control panel unlocked its settings and modifications for the defense cannon, seemingly becoming in a working state.

"Right. Everyone, I'm gonna need you guys to cover me for any possible intruders while I try to get this thing activated," Samus ordered.

"On it!" Complied Carolina as she stood on her guard, looking around them.

"We'll let you know if there's anything unusual, Sammy," Gandrayda followed after. The others doing the same thing.

Samus began typing in the codes for activation that the AU from the Olympus has sent to her. She had to type them down manually as fast as she could with only her free left hand, but with the timer not giving her a break, it was as if she was in typing class all over again but this time, only with one hand and with their whole lives and a planet's fate at stake.

"C'mon... you can do this," Samus told herself in her mind as her adrenaline was pumping inside all over her body, seemingly increasing by each second that passed by as she typed word by word and number by number.

Wash moved on his way to search for anything useful around the room. In the back of the room, he saw some lockers that were seemingly unlocked and opened a few of them, finding ammo for almost any sort of weapon that even weapons from UNSC standard issue use. It was as if they had some sort of weapons storage in case of a break-in and took the advantage to take in anything he could, giving half of the ammo he found to Carolina.

After being given supplies of ammunition, Carolina moved to see through the window panels around the room. On the horizon near the mountain range, there was a bright blue orb that flew right past the mountain range before it disappeared out of view immediately. It made her think that she was just imagining things but considering that it looked quite similar to the blue aura that she saw on the dark being she came across with earlier, it made her think twice before trying to make sense of it.

"Did I actually just see something? Or was it just my-"

"DONE!" Samus interrupted. "Now to wait until the codes execute the command for activation and we are ready to fire this thing!"

Wash was more focused on what Carolina said earlier and wanted to find out what it was that she meant.

"Wait, what did you say that-"

There was a loud thunderous sound that interrupted Wash and struck every corner of the room, throwing both of the freelancers and bounty hunters off balance for a moment. The same bright blue ball that flew over the horizon was what landed in front of them but this time, it looked much bigger than expected. It was so bright, none of them could see what it really was; whether it was a rare ball of lightning or some other type of phenomena that not one person in the group did know about.

They all tried to take a good look at it as its light started to dim and the dark being that every phazon-corrupted Pirate has been worshipping has revealed itself to them. Dark Samus has arrived with the objective to stop them from firing the defense cannon at all costs.

Carolina and Samus were the only ones in the whole group to look more horrified than the others.

"It's her!" Carolina exclaimed, feeling terrified at the sight of the same dark being that gave a creepy laughter to her earlier in the day. "The same dark beast!"

"No..." Samus murmured in disbelief. "How... how can you still be alive?!"

Ghor didn't want to waste the opportunity of killing the dark being and demanded everyone to shoot her on sight.

"OPEN FIRE!"

Everyone immediately started shooting at the phazon creature with no hesitation. However, their shots were only ricocheting away from her, rendering all of their current weapons, useless.

"Why isn't anything working!" Wash yelled in frustration.

"I mentioned it before that none of our current weapons would hurt such being," Vel pointed out, not knowing what to do himself.

Desperate to do anything against the corrupt creature, Wash grabbed the rocket launcher that he found in the lockers not long ago and shot at least two rockets near the ground that Dark Samus was standing, in order to prevent it from getting deflected. All it did, however, was merely make Dark Samus laugh uncontrollably in a demonic manner and began taunting at Wash, feeling unstoppable.

"You little cretin! Even with your biggest toys, you wouldn't be able to kill me!" She then turned to the person who she stole the phazon suit and DNA from, "You'd be surprised by the sheer number of new tricks I have at hand, all thanks to the combat data I've gathered from you and everyone else."

The dark creature didn't waste any more time and much to her amusement, she began shooting back at everyone, knocking all but a few of them down. The shots weren't fatal but it was enough to give them a good knockback and small stings of pain due to having high amounts of phazon radiation. It was useless to do any sort of retaliation against Dark Samus as none of their weapons would actually do anything against her at all.

Dark Samus then walked towards the fallen Pirate and stepped on his chest, ready to have him crushed to death by her own foot, aiming her cloned arm cannon at him. "Thanks to you, now I will finally be able to complete my full convergence of the galaxy and universe into nothing but pure phazon worlds!"

"Wh... what?" Vel mumbled as he was groaning in pain. He would've thought it was The Hunter to be feared, but The Dark Hunter has already proven to be more fearsome than The Hunter herself. Although he thought he was already done for, he still wanted to find out what was exactly The Dark Hunter talking about.

"Don't kid yourself!" She continued to taunt him, "You realize why you were the only surviving member of the mining crew back when you first left Aether, right?"

"I sneaked through..." Vel tried catching his breath whilst getting stepped on by Dark Samus, "...towards an escape pod!"

"That was my plan all along," she shot back. "Since you have had a history of defiance against your own kind, I let you escape after I was reborn with all the phazon that was collected inside the ship. Since then, I had been tracking your movements all along. For that reason alone, I was finally able to locate one of the outside colonies, such as planets called, Zebes and SR388!"

"What?!" Samus was in disbelief from what she has heard from her own dark twin.

Her doppelganger turned to face a confused Samus.

"You heard what I said! I've already sent in a group to infiltrate both worlds and grab as many of my children and siblings as they can, and send them to a place where they will grow and become even more powerful than what you all can imagine!" She then turned back to her victim underneath her, "Too bad you're just another number among the list of expendable agents. I expected more from you!"

"You may do as you please, but your reign will not be a long lasted victory!" Vel shot back, knowing that even if he kept his mouth shut, he would be dead either way so aggravating his attacker was the least he could do before his life would be taken away.

Dark Samus began the process of slowly crushing the Pirate to death, but before she was able to finish off the doomed Pirated, the control panel's computer announced it has just completed executing the activation codes, distracting her from killing him.

 _"Activation process complete. Please confirm."_

Rundas decided not to waste any more time and dashed towards the control panel to fire the defense cannon, only for Dark Samus to knock him back away from the computer with her phazon-charged arm cannon. In response, Samus angrily charged at her doppelganger. Because Dark Samus is a near perfect identical clone to that of Samus, she had just the same amount, if not, better reflexes than Samus herself as she was swiftly knocked back by her evil twin. Not to mention Dark Samus having an invisible force that surrounded her for protection from any outside harm.

"As I said... useless. Ahh ha ha ha ha!" The dark being boasted as she burst into a maniacal laughter afterward.

Having thoroughly planned their fates, she ultimately decided to step back from the Pirate and walked towards the debris from where she once came through. The dark creature turned around to face them, with the opposing group having no clue as to what she was planning to do next, and began to charge up her variant version of Samus' charge beam, filling the room with full of blue light. The blue light then turned to a huge wave of intensive amounts of phazon energy, knocking every person in the room to the ground, unconscious. Having seemingly finished what her minions couldn't do, she gave one final demonic laughter before flying away, heading towards an unknown destination as she disappeared from view into Norion's atmosphere.

 _"Meteor at approximately 800km. All personnel, prepare for impact."_

The faint voice was heard in the background as a room of unconscious people were scattered inside the control tower. It seemed like even though the meteor was still several hundreds of kilometers away, the meteor was raging through the planet's atmosphere and entering at an extremely high velocity.

However, only one person was still left standing but heavily injured. A weak Samus was still fighting for her last strength as she dragged herself on the ground towards the control panel. Raising one arm and the next, the least she could do was lean against the chair next to her. The pain she was experiencing inside both her chest and abdominal areas was immense and unbearing, but the thought of having to save yet another planet from an impending doom was the only thing that was driving her to keep going. After much struggle, she was finally able to press the confirmation button for the firing process to commence.

The defense cannon gained life as it fired a giant laser beam right above Norion's atmosphere, hitting a mirrored satellite that just finished aiming and following the meteor's path, destroying it into a million pieces that soon after, disintegrated through the atmosphere. From the planet's surface, one would be able to see as if a small rogue star was demolished and left bright luminous pieces of debris burning up inside the atmosphere and into the sky itself. Any second longer and the whole world would've suffered a similar fate like Tallon IV and Aether themselves.

"We... we did it..." said Samus in a weak voice. She was profoundly happy that they managed to destroy the meteor. However, she began to worry more about her teammates and all of their potential fates. She couldn't resist from trying to fall to the ground for much longer and soon began to mumble to herself repeatedly before falling unconscious like the rest of her comrades.

"We did it... we—we did... it... did-it... we... we... did... it..."

The air inside the control tower soon fell into silence as the wind outside of the broke glass panel was the only thing filling in the empty sounds of isolation around the fallen bounty hunters and freelancers.

 **I hope you enjoyed this chapter! It took me a bit longer to do since half of it was more of a rehash from the first half of the very first chapter and had to do some things differently. I tried adding in more details and a few additions here and there in order to provide a more refreshing way of seeing how this whole entire scene turned out to be in the end. Again, I'm sorry for the slow uploads. Writing isn't my main forte, but my motivation to keep writing this whole crossover is still there. I haven't given up! At least not yet... ^.^ But I don't plan on discontinuing this any time soon. I'll be making sure to see it till the very end and I already have so many ideas for the ending of this fanfic, even though it is far from being finished xD Anyways, leave a review and do some criticism! Really appreciate the criticism I got before! It'll help me out a lot more than you think! Stay tuned for the next upcoming chapter!**


	13. Chapter 13: Phazon Fusion

**Next up, Samus' awakening and an astonishing revelation will come to greet her...**

 **P.S. I am in no way affiliated with both parties nor own anything from them. All rights for Red vs. Blue goes to Rooster Teeth and all rights for Metroid goes to Nintendo.**

 _Chapter 13: Phazon Fusion_

"She's coming to!" A female voice was heard in the darkness. "Can you hear me, Samus?"

Samus was now coming to her senses as she woke up from what it seemed to be a deep slumber. She slightly tilted her head sideways and slowly opened her eyes, but her vision was blurred. Something in front of her was in the way, but she was still able to make out what it was, considering its proximity in front of her. A panel of some sort was reading her biological reading; something similar that was done back when she first gained access to the Olympus, although the reading had something glowing in red this time. She couldn't make out what it read as it quickly left out of view and a woman in a blue suit came in front of her.

Her vision became clearer and the woman's face was revealed to her, but no one that she personally knew, other than your usual nurse working alongside Dane's crew within the Olympus for sure as the environment was all too familiar in its structure. Samus was thankful she wasn't amnesiac as she still remembered the last thing that happened before she blacked out for good. Although she wasn't sure if she did anything else after that or if she somehow fell into a coma after the incident. The good thing is that she was no longer feeling the immense pain she felt back on Norion, but something wasn't making her feel quite the same as she did before. She quietly ignored her nurse for a moment as she was still trying to collect her thoughts.

"Vital signs are stable. Good condition... hmm... everything seems to be okay," the woman announced, sounding pleased at the results she was seeing. She then gave a warm smile to Samus and proceeded to greet her. "Welcome back, Samus. You've been asleep for quite some time-a month, to be exact. We feared we lost you."

"What?!" Samus gasped. She couldn't believe it's been a whole month since the incident. It couldn't have since she remembers it as if it was fairly recently. "What happened throughout this whole time I was out?"

"Well, for starters..." her nurse said in a calming manner, "Norion is now safe, thanks to your great efforts. However, at the end of the battle, we found you and the rest of the hunters and freelancers, all unconscious. We even saw a Pirate, unconscious along with you all. We took him in, but right now he is in solitary confinement for safety measures and everyone voted that until you woke up, the Federation could then put him in interrogation and have you be part of the decision on what to do next with him in the end."

"So what you're saying is, that everyone who fell unconscious inside the control tower, survived?" Samus inquired.

"That's right," the nurse confirmed. She then continued on with her explanation from before. "After doing extensive medical examinations to all of you, including the Pirate we found, they yielded some surprising results: Your bodies are now, somehow, self-generating phazon."

"Self-what you mean?!" She marveled back. "Did you really say that our...?"

"Indeed," her nurse replied. "What's even stranger is that there are no negative effects to your health. This led us to investigate if we could put some effective use on this phazon. During the invasion on Norion, you must have noticed some powerful troopers in new suits, right?"

"P.E.D. suits, isn't it?" Samus knew it had something to do with phazon but couldn't remember what it stood for until it bothered her too much to remember that she didn't try to do so for more than a minute.

"Correct. It's what we call Phazon Enhancement Device or just PEDs for short."

"Right."

"We also integrated the same Phazon Enhancement Device into your armor while repairing your damaged bodysuit."

Samus had forgotten to check up on her own suit and took a quick glance at what she could. Her armor was indeed fitted with the same PED suit as the troopers she saw back at Norion. Her armor was noticeably much more different than before. It bears some similarities to the armor of the marines that carried the PED. Her bottom layer of plating has become a blue-gray like color, with her arms and legs having squared-off plates to the sides. The lights of her entire armor have a deeper contrast in color, and what was once orange throughout her armor has now become toned down to a deep gold color. Her shoulder plates have been drastically reduced in size and shape, having three rounded pegs coming out of them from each one. All of this made her feel like a completely different person and somewhat, looking cooler than before.

"This all looks very promising!" She said with some excitement in her voice. She tried to stand up before the nurse called her out to stay where she was as the nurse wasn't done examining her.

"Don't stand up yet," the nurse ordered, stopping Samus in her tracks. "I still have some finishing to do on your checkups before I can let you go." She proceeded to look back at the tablet she has been holding onto. She then faced Samus again after studying her tablet for a moment. "Troopers wearing this device have phazon pumped to their weapons from an external backpack. This gives them an extra boost of firepower, as you have seen back on Norion," She then walked towards a chair nearby that had some unknown controls that Samus didn't know much about. She continued on, "but in your case, think about it. With this phazon coursing through your body, you can fuel the PED using your own internal energy. Pretty effective don't you think?"

"Seems like it, but..." Samus was more concerned about what her nurse was about to do with the chair equipped with some sort of control panel for something. "What are you doing right now?"

"We'll begin to have you try out your new PED and see if everything's in working order. Let's try it shall we?"

"Alright," she replied hesitantly. She was starting to feel quite shaky about what was going to happen in a moment, whether she would feel some sort of pain through the process or if she was ever going to get used to using her PED.

"Seal the room," the nurse gave a voice command to the computer in front of her, sealing the only exit out of the room. Another voice command came right after. "Initiate PED program." The nurse's chair rose up and a circular door from the ground opened to reveal a group of unknown mounted panels rising up in the middle of the room with what seemed to be crystallized phazon covering the sides of the floating panels.

The nurse then gave instructions to Samus on how to activate her PED suit and inject one energy tank for use in hypermode. Samus did as she was told and for the first time ever, or what it seemed like the first time using such GF technology that involved phazon, she now personally knows the profound effects of phazon's true firepower as it completely demolished the platings that were once in front of her in mere seconds.

 _"Training complete."_ The computer announced.

She switched back to her normal state and was surprised that she felt no pain when doing such thing, unlike back in the impact crater from before in Tallon IV where she felt small stings of pain while entering in a hyper-mode state on pools of liquid phazon.

"As you may have noticed during this test, hypermode possess devastating power," said the nurse as her chair was rising down to its last location.

"Most definitely," Samus replied, still surprised about the raw power of the PED. For her, to think that the Pirates have already had this type of technology, this would most definitely be a big competitor against the infected Pirates that try to fuse themselves in hypermode, to which she thought Space Pirates won't be having a chance against her in this state at all.

"Because of that," the nurse stated, "we had to learn the hard way just how powerful our enemies are, considering how phazon is now used as both fuel and weapons for many things during the battlefield."

Yeah, tell me about it..." said Samus sarcastically, as she and the rest of her crew went through so much trouble with dealing Space Pirates and other drones turning to hypermode firepower.

"I trust that you will make good use of the PED suit after the mess you've been through," the nurse replied. "Anyway, that's all for now, but before you go, I would like to inform you that the Aurora Unit 242 wishes to meet with you. There are many pressing matters to discuss with what has been going on during this past few weeks. The AU chamber is located just off the Command Bridge. Good luck."

Samus complied with the information she got. Just as she was about to stand up, the nurse called her out about something she forgot to mention to her.

"Oh and one more thing: after twenty-five seconds, the safety feature automatically ends hypermode. If you're in the middle of a combat situation, you might want to keep close attention to it. That's all I have to say. I hope for the best to you."

"Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

As she stood up, it took her some time before she finally managed to get herself together in full balance as it's been a whole month since she was able to stand. Nonetheless, this didn't stop her from continuing on to exit the medical lab. Before she exited the room, she found some scannable data nearby and decided to take a quick look at these. Both involved the properties and origins of both phazon and the Phazon Enhancement Device.

 _Galactic Federation Datafile PX-013_

 _{Phazon Enhancement Device}_

 _The Phazon Enhancement Device is designed to harness the energy of Phazon minerals, originally discovered on Aether, for a new Federation weapon system. It is being tested by GF Marine battalion stationed in the Norion system. Marines can initiate an energy siphon from a supply of phazon carried in a backpack into their armor suits. This allows them to temporarily enhance the exoskeletal and weapon systems of their armor suits. To date, no marines have displayed signs of "Phazon sickness."_

 _Galactic Federation Datafile PD-001_

 _{Phazon}_

 _Phazon is a substance of extragalactic origin. It is a highly radioactive ore with extreme mutagenic properties. It has certain biological qualities, including the ability to reproduce itself. Exposure to Phazon often affects the brains of sentient beings, causing erratic, destructive behavior. It is also a potent source of energy, surpassing even Fuel Gel in pure output potential. It must be handled carefully, as it can cause "Phazon sickness" if used incorrectly._

"This is definitely some information that both Washington and Carolina will need by the time I get in contact with them again," she said to herself. "Hopefully they're alright."

Right as she stepped foot out into the Gunnery Station, a familiar pair was there to greet her.

"Hey, look!" One of them said. "The good lady is okay now!"

"Oh my God, hey! Um... Sa-Samm..."

The latter couldn't seem to remember her name.

"It's Samus," she corrected as she studied them for a moment, realizing they were the same colored soldiers that she tried to recruit over a month ago. "When did you guys get here? Is everyone else alright?" Samus wanted some answers from them in order to become more hopeful about what's been going on within the timeframe that she was in a coma.

"Well..." Said the soldier in pink, trying to remember exactly when they have arrived at the Olympus, "It's probably been about... two weeks. Yeah, two weeks actually. Man, this station is far better than the ones we've been before! Like the first time we got here, my first meal was a filet mignon with some chicken salad, cheese, and dressing. It was such a good delicious meal. Too bad the dining room in this place doesn't look as vivid as it would with a more vibrant lighting atmosphere than the usual lighting there is all around the ship."

"I got to eat so many cookies and milk!" The blue soldier said, excitedly. He then continued on as he stared blankly above Samus' helmet. "And more cookies. More milk. More chocolate. It was all good."

"Caboose, I told you not to eat too much junk food," scolded Donut, while not trying to sound rude at once. "You know it's bad for your health. You might want to start having a diet as I do. I've already been losing some weight and getting in good shape because of it."

"But-but... I like cookies. It's probably the only meal I've been eating for the past few weeks."

"Don't worry, Caboose. I'll teach you how to go through a good healthy diet from now on."

"It better involve a lot of cookies!"

"A good healthy diet does not involve a lot of cookies. I'm sorry."

"Then I don't like diets. They're disgusting!"

"Could you guys just help me at figuring out what in the world is going on RIGHT NOW?!" Samus got their full attention as she shouted at them. She has almost completely forgotten how these soldiers love to argue with one another and getting off topic about everything. She took a deep breath and tried calming herself down, "Listen, you said that it's been two weeks since you have arrived here, right?

"I did," Donut acknowledged.

"I knew mean ladies could hide as good ladies every time I try to make friends with them..." Caboose whimpered as he felt hurt by Samus' exclamation. "I-I think I'm just gonna wait where Carolina is sleeping." He then started to walk away slowly towards the Infirmary Room next door. "At least I know she won't be mean to me while she's sleeping."

"Sleeping?" She said, perplexed. She felt bad for having to shout at him and wanted to apologize to the poor blue soldier, who has probably gone through a lot, according to what she can remember about him, but she was more focused on wanting to know what Caboose meant by sleeping; whether it was actual sleep or she is just as comatose as she was not too long ago. She turned to Donut, who was still standing beside her and questioned him instead. "Do you know what he meant by sleeping?"

Donut didn't say anything as he tried to understand what Caboose actually meant in his own language. Then, he finally remembered something crucial that he almost nearly forgot to tell Samus about. "Oh yeah! I think it may be bad for me to tell you this but..."

"But...?" Samus waited for the pink soldier to answer her for several passing moments, growingly becoming impatient while at the same time, trying not to make it obvious enough.

"Let's go to the infirmary and let me show you something," said Donut, not trying to sound more anxious than he already was.

Samus followed after him to the Infirmary Room. She's never seen the infirmary room herself, but she was sure enough that throughout these whole weeks, she's probably been confined in there for days and weeks to come until her awakening.

As they both arrived, Samus looked around the infirmary and looked almost empty. Only a couple of soldiers were seemingly recovering from their injuries in the head and torso, either by explosives or some other type of physical trauma they've endured. On the left side, there was another room, filled with clean transparent glass panels. Inside the room, there were at least five hospital beds lined up together in spaces. One of them, at the second to last bed where Caboose was sitting next to, was a woman in red hair laying there, looking as though she was in a deep slumber.

Something familiar about her face had Samus tilting her head in confusion. She remembered parts of her facial features, but couldn't tell from where. She then turned to face Donut, looking for an answer as to who this red-haired woman was.

"Who is this woman exactly?"

"You don't remember her?" Donut asked in confusion, staring at Samus for a moment. "I thought you two would've known each other well by now."

"See...?" Caboose sniffled quietly, still feeling hurt. "She doesn't even remember her. She takes away our friends. And then... forgets about them. What a mean lady!"

"Wait, what? No! I..." Samus didn't exactly know what Caboose was talking about. Surely she knew that shouting at him might've probably hurt his feelings, but taking away his friends and forget about them? She believed this wasn't the case as she did remember having Wash and Carolina come with her and both ended up going through a similar fate as her, which are the friends that the blue soldier was talking about.

This memory, however, sparked something in her mind about the woman lying in the hospital bed in front of them. Could it be...?

"Is this... Carolina?"

"Of course, she is!" said Donut excitedly, finally feeling happier seeing that Samus seemingly remembered her. "Glad you finally remember!"

"I don't remember seeing her without her helmet so that's why I had trouble remembering her. It's not like all of your visors are as transparent as mine when seeing it at close proximity." Samus walked towards Caboose, who was still sitting next to Carolina, and put her left hand on his left shoulder, apologizing to him. "Forgive me about before. I was only trying to get you and the pink guy's attention, that's all."

"For the love of God! It's lightish red!" Donut cried out in frustration.

"That's pink in other terms unless they consider it otherwise from where you come from, which is pretty doubtful. Anyway..." She paused for a moment before focusing on Caboose, "I'm also sorry about the things you have to go through, all because I didn't do my best to warn your friends about the dangers they had to face against an evil being I once thought I defeated before," she then tried to give him a small offer in return, "Tell you what. I'll offer you some chocolate bars I have stored inside my ship once I'm done with a meeting that I have to go to right now. It's the cookie chip kind."

Caboose took off his sight from Carolina and turned to face Samus, starting to feel a bit relieved. "Really? Oh, thank you so much!"

Donut began to feel annoyed about Caboose choosing to ditch his diet recommendations and Samus was going to ruin his chance for that. "Hey! I told him we were going to work on his diet. That's gonna be a bad start for him."

"I'm only trying to keep him happy and not let him resort to having more hatred towards me than he already has to begin with," Samus informed him. As she took a glance at Caboose, he seemingly switched from being happy to looking more depressed than before. He looked away from both of them and stared blankly into space as he started to murmur things to himself. Samus couldn't understand a thing he was saying but decided to take a closer look at him and called for his attention. "Caboose? Is everything alright?"

No answer.

Only whispers were heard, but nothing at all familiar. However, he took out a picture and silently glanced at it for a while.

On the photo, it seemed to be a pair of friends or siblings, staring at whoever or whatever took the picture in front of them. They have put both of their arms around each others' shoulders, with the bearded, blonde-haired attractive looking guy smiling, while the other slightly taller brown-haired guy on the right, who looked more cute than handsome, had a wide grin on his face, resembling that of a child's. Samus wanted to question him about the people in the picture but decided against it after seeing the familiarity in both of their armors. The guy on the left was wearing a steel-colored armor with yellow trim, very similar to the one Agent Washington was wearing last time she's seen him, while the one on the right was wearing blue armor; the exact same armor she was looking at on Caboose right now.

It seemed obvious enough that both of those soldiers were none other than Caboose and Washington, without wearing their helmets. Samus was surprised about both of their looks as she had imagined them to look completely different than that in the picture. Because Caboose was holding on to the picture with a frozen stare, she began having a bad feeling that something might've happened to Wash and the rest of her crew from Norion.

Before Samus could utter a word, Caboose stood up to face Donut. He began to whimper loudly, "Donut... Please tell her that she needs to save everyone that got lost!"

"Lost?" A confused Samus said, concerned about what he was talking about. She began to worry. Her guts started to feel like they were already twisting themselves out of anxiety and fear. "Whatever happened to Washington and everyone else that was with me? Has your whole team gone missing too?"

"Oh yeah, about that..." said Donut with his voice cracking up slightly, "Remember when I told you that I wanted to show you something? Well... not only it was for you to check on Carolina's state, no pun intended, but also that your other friends, including Wash, have gone missing! Same with Sarge and Tucker, whom they went along with too!"

"What?!"

 **Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter (and cliffhanger) :)**

 **Sorry for any grammar/spelling errors you may encounter. It's not always easy spotting my own mistakes, but I do try giving it my best. As always, look forward to the next upcoming chapter as it's gonna be quite a long one. And don't forget to leave some reviews too! :D**


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